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the week after that, Mrs. Hempstock came to visit Mrs. Thorn of a morning. They took tea in the parlor.
    “It is a blessing about the Forester boy,” said Mrs. Hempstock.
    “That it is,” said Mrs. Thorn. “Have another scone, my dear. I expect your Daisy shall be a bridesmaid.”
    “I trust she shall,” said Mrs. Hempstock, “ if she should live so long.”
    Mrs.Thorn looked up, alarmed. “Why, she is not ill, Mrs. Hempstock? Say it is not so.”
    “She does not eat, Mrs. Thorn. She wastes away. She drinks a little water from time to time.”
    “Oh, my!”
    Mrs. Hempstock went on,“Last night I finally discovered the cause. It is your Dunstan.”
    “Dunstan? He has not . . .” Mrs. Thorn raised one hand to her mouth.
    “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Hempstock, hastily shaking her head and pursing her lips, “nothing like that. He has ignored her. She has not seen him for days and days. She has taken it into her head that he no longer cares for her, and all she does is hold the snowdrop he gave her, and she sobs.”
    Mrs. Thorn measured out more tea from the jar into the pot, added hot water. “Truth to tell,” she admitted, “we’re a little concerned about Dunstan, Thorney and me. He’s been mooning . That’s the only word for it. His work isn’t getting done. Thorney was saying that he needs some settling down, that boy. If he’d but settle down, why Thorney was saying he’d settle all the Westward Meadows on the lad.”
    Mrs. Hempstock nodded slowly. “Hempstock would certainly not be averse to seeing our Daisy happy. Certain he’d settle a flock of our sheep on the girl.” The Hempstocks’ sheep were notoriously the finest for miles around: shaggy-coated and intelligent (for sheep), with curling horns and sharp hooves. Mrs. Hempstock and Mrs. Thorn sipped their tea. And so it was settled.
    Dunstan Thorn was married in June to Daisy Hempstock. And if the groom seemed a little distracted, well, the bride was as glowing and lovely as ever any bride has been.
    Behind them, their fathers discussed the plans for the farmhouse they would build for the newlyweds in the western meadow. Their mothers agreed how lovely Daisy looked, and what a pity it was that Dunstan had stopped Daisy from wearing the snowdrop he had bought for her at the market at the end of April, in her wedding dress.
    And it is there we will leave them, in a falling flurry of rose petals, scarlet and yellow and pink and white.
    Or almost.
    They lived in Dunstan’s cottage, while their little farmhouse was erected, and they were certainly happy enough; and the day-to-day business of raising sheep, and herding sheep, and shearing them, and nursing them, slowly took the faraway look from Dunstan’s eyes.
    First autumn came, then winter. It was at the end of February, in lambing season, when the world was cold, and a bitter wind howled down the moors and through the leafless forest, when icy rains fell from the leaden skies in continual drizzling showers, at six in the evening, after the sun had set and the sky was dark, that a wicker basket was pushed through the space in the wall. The guards, on each side of the gap, at first did not notice the basket. They were facing the wrong way, after all, and it was dark and wet, and they were busy stamping the ground and staring gloomily and longingly at the lights of the village.
    And then a high, keening wail began.
    It was then that they looked down, and saw the basket at their feet. There was a bundle in the basket: a bundle of oiled silk and woolen blankets, from the top of which protruded a red, bawling face, with screwed-up little eyes, a mouth, open and vocal, and hungry.
    And there was, attached to the baby’s blanket with a silver pin, a scrap of parchment, upon which was written in an elegant, if slightly archaic, handwriting the following words:

Chapter Two
    In Which Tristran Thorn Grows to Manhood and Makes a Rash Promise

    Y ears passed.
    The next Faerie Market was held on schedule on