“Well, evidently stones won’t drive him off,” said Quest. So he went round the goblin and forward on his way. But the imp scuttled on in front of him, to the right and to the left, and then straight in front, for all the world like a rabbit.
At last they came to a little level spot between cliffs—a very stony place; and on one side of it there was a deep well-spring. “Here will I stay,” said Quest; and he at once spread out his sheep-skin coat under a crab-tree and sat down, so that he might reflect in peace and remember what All-Rosy had verily and truly told him.
But when the imp saw that, he squatted down straight in front of Quest under the tree, played silly tricks on him, and worried him horribly. He chased lizards under Quest’s feet, threw burrs at his shirt, and slipped grasshoppers up his sleeves.
“Oh dear, this is most annoying!” thought Quest, when it had gone on for some little time. “I have left my wise old grandfather, my brothers and my home, so that I might be in quiet and remember the truth—and here am I wasting my time with this horned imp of mischief!”
But as he had come out in a good cause, he nevertheless thought it the right thing to stay where he was.
III
So Quest and the goblin lived together on that lone ledge between the cliffs, and each day was like the first. The goblin worried Quest so that he couldn’t get on with his thinking.
On a clear morning Quest would rise from sleep and feel happy. “How still it is, how lovely! Surely to-day I shall remember the truth!” And lo, from the branch overhead a handful of crabs would come tumbling about his ears, so that his head buzzed and his thoughts all got mixed. And there was the little monster mocking him from the crabtree and laughing fit to burst. Or Quest would be lying in the shade, thinking most beautifully, till he felt like saying: “There, there now, now it will come back to me, now I shall puzzle out the truth!” And then the goblin would squirt him all over with ice-cold water from the spring through a hollow elder twig—and again Quest would clean forget what he had already thought out.
There was no silly trick nor idle joke that the goblin did not play on Quest on the ledge there. And yet all might have been well, if Quest hadn’t found it just a tiny bit amusing to watch these tomfooleries; and though he was thinking hard about his task, yet his eyes would wander and look round to see what the imp might be doing next.
Quest was angry with himself over this, because he was wearying more and more for his grandfather, and he saw full well that he would never remember the truth while the goblin was about.