“I shall never leave you any more,” cried Curlylocks merrily. And the herd boys and girls clapped their hands and threw up their caps for joy over her words.
Only Lilio had not joined in their games, because he was rather sad and worried that day. He stayed near Reygoch, and from there he watched Curlylocks in all her loveliness, and all the pretty magic she made there in the forest.
Meantime Reygoch had come out of his hole. Out he came and stood up among the trees of the forest, and as he stood there his head rose above the hundred-year-old forest, so terribly big was Reygoch.
Over the forest looked Reygoch, and out into the plain.
The sun had already set, and the sky was all crimson. In the plain you could see the two golden fields spread out like two gold kerchiefs, and in the midst of the fields two villages like two white doves. A little way beyond the two villages flowed the mighty River Banewater, and all along the river rose great grass-grown dykes; and on the dykes you could see herds and their keepers moving.
“Well, well!” said Reygoch, “and to think that I have spent a thousand years in Frosten city, in that desert, when there is so much beauty in the world!” And Reygoch was so delighted with looking into the plain that he just stood there with his great head as big as a barrel turning from right to left, like a huge scarecrow nodding above the tree-tops.
Presently Lilio called to him:
“Sit down, daddy, for fear the elders of the villages should see you.”
Reygoch sat down, and the two started talking, and Lilio told Reygoch why he was so sad that day.
“A very wicked thing is going to happen to-day,” said Lilio. “I overheard the elders of our village talking last night, and this is what they said: ‘Let us pierce the dyke along the River Banewater. The river will widen the hole, the dyke will fall, and the water will flood the enemy village; it will drown men and women, flood the graveyard and the fields, till the water will be level above them, and nothing but a lake to show where the enemy village has been. But our fields are higher, and our village lies on a height, and so no harm will come to us.’ And then they really went out with a great ram to pierce the dyke secretly and at dead of night. But, daddy,” continued Lilio, “I know that our fields are not so high, and I know that the water will overflow them too, and before the night is over there will be a lake where our two villages used to be. And that is why I am so sad.”