"Where is the lock of hair, my son?" asked the old man.
"In the teapot still, if you have not touched it," said Kind William; "but the dust of fourteen years must have destroyed all gloss and colour."
On searching the teapot, however, the lock of hair was found to be as bright as ever, and it lay in the weaver's hand like a coil of gold.
"It is the song that puzzles me," said Kind William. "Seven, and seven, and seven make twenty-one. Now that is just my age."
"There is your warp of woollen, if that is anything," added the weaver, gazing at the loom with a melancholy air.
"And this is golden enough," laughed Kind William, pointing to the curl. "Come, father, let us see how far one hair will go on the shuttle." And suiting the action to the word, he began to wind. He wound the shuttle full, and then sat down to the loom and began to throw.
The result was a fabric of such beauty that the Weavers shouted with amazement, and one single hair served for the woof of the whole piece.
Before long there was not a town dame or a fine country lady but must needs have a dress of the new stuff, and before the sixty-three hairs were used up, the fortunes of the weaver and his son were made.
About this time the miller's memory became clearer, and he was often heard to speak of an old boy-and-girl love between his dear daughter and the wealthy manufacturer of the golden cloth. Within a year and a day Kind William married his sweetheart, and as money sticks to money, in the end he added the old miller's riches to his own.
Moreover there is every reason to believe that he and his wife lived happily to the end of their days.