The traveller comes next to a mountain covered here and there with low shrubbery. Overhead stands the lark, fluttering and whistling to the sheepdog, till suddenly she drops loose-winged like a fallen leaf to a place it appeared she had not been guarding. The lark protects by singing above what is not her home. The lark, like a poet, sings not of this place beneath but of over there hidden in the high grasses.

So the story diverged.

The traveller takes the goat’s path up the small mountain and arrives to a copse of ash trees and whitethorn. As he penetrates the copse he finds release from the sun and hears the murmur of a stream. In time he comes to a pool dappled with sunlight and leaves. He takes his rest there.

Thinking on his quest he leans forward to drink and sees the sudden flash of the salmon.

Entranced, he watches the pool. Then, in the dark depths, he sees the salmon, the white-bellied pig, turn again. The hero is overcome by a form of sensual melancholia. He realizes the quest that the woman has set him has led back to her. He grows frightened and wrings his hands.

Now I have to face my destiny, he thinks, and this woman may refuse me peace.

Then, what he has to do grows as clear as day. He decides to stay up all night by the pool. But first he must deny himself sleep, for one of the temptations put in the path of knowledge is weariness. So he washes his body in the stream. Next, he must make sure not to catch the reflection of his own face in the pool, else he will lose sight of the fish. So he tells the fish how beautiful she is. Lastly, he must not think of his earlier achievements.

So, he thinks of other things.

Having fought off these three weaknesses, the traveller is filled with hope that here by the pool he will find both the nature of his quest and of this curse that has had him wandering the earth for thirty years, employed in various ventures he must not think upon. For this was the third and final test and the most difficult of all, seeing as he did not know what the test involved or how, being without such knowledge, it might be successfully accomplished.

All he knows is that his soul has been burdened with this quest and that with its completion he may have fulfilled his destiny.