The Old Woman and Her Hen
In the morning, however, his courage had returned; for the word Carasoyn was always saying itself in his brain.
“People in fairy stories,” he said, “always find what they want. Why should not I find this Carasoyn? It does not seem likely. But the world doesn’t go round by likely . So I will try.”
But how was he to begin?
When Colin did not know what to do, he always did something. So as soon as his father was gone to the hill, he wandered up the stream down which the fairies had come.
“But I needn’t go on so,” he said, “for if the Carasoyn grew in the fairies’ country, the queen would know how to get it.”
All at once he remembered how he had lost himself on the moor when he was a little boy; and had gone into a hut and found there an old woman spinning. And she had told him such stories! and shown him the way home. So he thought she might be able to help him now; for he remembered that she was very old then, and must be older and still wiser now. And he resolved to go and look for the hut, and ask the old woman what he was to do.
So he left the stream, and climbed the hill, and soon came upon a desolate moor. The sun was clouded and the wind was cold, and everything looked dreary. And there was no sign of a hut anywhere. He wandered on, looking for it; and all at once found that he had forgotten