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The old woman climbed up into the thorn-hedge, and sat on its top, singing: 'Overground, underground, round-about spell; The Thirsty has come to the Thirsty Well!

It had been built through ages and every wind of pleasure and pain had blown about it. Then it had slowly come about that the winds of pain had increased upon the winds of pleasure. The mind closed the door of the palace and the nature inclined to turn from it. It was there, but a sea mist hid it, and a tall thorn-hedge, and a web stretched across its idle gates.

Little knowing the pledges that a woman had given for him, he did say to himself that Maxwell owed him much that he was not called upon to bear everything from a man he had given back to power. And all the time his thoughts built a thorn-hedge about her face, her pity. Let him see them no more, not even in the mirror of the mind. Great heaven! what harm could such as he do to her?

But by this time the hundred years had just passed, and the day had come when Briar-rose was to awake again. When the King's son came near to the thorn-hedge, it was nothing but large and beautiful flowers, which parted from each other of their own accord, and let him pass unhurt, then they closed again behind him like a hedge.

After long, long years a King's son came again to that country, and heard an old man talking about the thorn-hedge, and that a castle was said to stand behind it in which a wonderfully beautiful princess, named Briar-rose, had been asleep for a hundred years; and that the King and Queen and the whole court were asleep likewise.

A headman was standing in front of the skin curtain, and as the warriors came before him he murmured a word they could not hear, and touched their foreheads with something that they could not see. And this something he held in his hands. And through his fingers they saw the gleam of a red stone that they knew. The fight raged across the thorn-hedge outside.

"From the dark thorn-hedge rustles forth the owl, and by his hooting rouses the hoarse choir of the ravens; in night-black swarm they gather, and croak aloud with their hollow voices, magpies, crows, and daws!

Jane, don't you be such a little jack-ape again that's all. You see what will happen if you do. Now, tell me He turned to the girl, but before he had time to speak the question there was a loud shout, and a man bounded in through the opening in the thorn-hedge. 'Many foes are upon us! he cried. 'Make ready the defences! His breath only served for that, and he lay panting on the ground.

The field was divided by a stout thorn-hedge from the one beyond it, and the two horsemen, careering neck and neck, glanced at each other curiously as they approached this barrier.

"We must have up the shallop," said Carver, "and send a picked company to see what entertainment there may be for us on shore." "And I counsel that all go well armed," quoth Captain Miles Standish, "for these men of the forest are sharper than a thorn-hedge. What! what!" he said, looking over to the eager group of girls and boys, "ye would go ashore, would ye?