"'She will tell me the way,' he said, 'for she knows the world from its very beginning.'
"So he ordered that they should saddle and bridle his strongest steed, and up the mountain he rode for many a toilsome hour, until he came to where the roc lived among the clouds.
"She listened civilly to the man's question. 'So you are weary of your life,' she said. 'Many a pilgrim comes to me on the same quest, and I tell them all the same thing. The obstacles to getting away from the Valley of Vain Regret are many, for there is but one road, and that has difficulties innumerable; but the thing that makes escape nearly impossible is the dragon that watches for travelers, and has so many eyes that two of them are always awake. There is one hope, however. If you will examine my wings and make yourself a similar pair, you can fly above the pitfalls and the dragon's nest, and so reach the palace safely.'
"As she said this, the roc slowly stretched her great wings, and the man examined them eagerly, above and below.
"'And in what direction do I fly?' he asked at last.
"'Toward the rising sun,' replied the roc; then her wings closed, her head drooped, and she fell asleep, and no further word could the man get from her.
"He rode home, and for many weeks he labored and made others labor, to build an air-ship that should carry him out of the Valley of Vain Regret. It was finished at last. It was cleverly fashioned, and had wings as broad as the roc's; but on the day when the man finally stepped within it and set it in motion, it carried him only a short distance outside the castle gates, and then sank to the boughs of a tall tree, and, try as he might, the air-ship could not be made to take a longer flight.
"His poor shrunken heart fluttered with rage and disappointment. 'I will go to the wise hermit,' he said. So he went far through the woods to the hut of the wise hermit, and he told him the same gruesome things about the difficulties that beset the road out of the Valley of Vain Regret, and said that one's only hope lay in tunneling beneath them.
"So the old man hired a large number of miners, and, setting their faces eastward, they burrowed down into the earth, and blasted and dug a way which the man followed, a greater and greater eagerness possessing him with each step of progress; but just when his hopes were highest, the miners broke through into an underground cavern, bottomless and black, from which they all started back, barely in time to save themselves. It was impossible to go farther, and the whole company returned by the way they had come, and the miners were very glad to breathe the air of the upper world again; but the man's disappointment was bitter.