A little way out of town he came to a stream and decided to put down his lute so that he could use both hands to scoop up drinking water.  Since the bank was steep and slippery with mud, he put his lute on level ground a few feet behind him and then drank his fill.  Great was his dismay and astonishment when he turned around and discovered that his lute was nowhere to be seen!

"Are you looking for something?" came a female voice behind him.  He turned back to the stream and saw nobody.  "Are you looking for someone?" came the same voice, again from behind him.  He turned again and saw a young girl standing near him.  She was not a pretty young girl.  In fact, she was a homely young girl.  All right, let's call a spade a spade: with her angular shape, long hooked nose and sharp protruding chin she looked downright ugly, very much like a witch!  But how could a witch possibly be so young?

"Well, what are you staring at?" said the witch with a cackling laugh.  "You were expecting maybe an old lady?  This may come as a surprise to you, but witches are not born old.  Ugly, yes - by your human standards - but not old.  We're born as babies, we grow up, we grow old and we die just like anybody else.  We haven't found a magic spell or potion to halt and reverse the aging process yet, but we're working on it!"

Suddenly she stopped laughing and said fiercely, "All right, enough small talk.  Let's get down to business.  You've been looking for me and now you've found me.  Tell me, Ned, were you really intending to kill me?"

In a panic, Ned tried to run, but he was rooted to the spot: his shoes had grown roots which had sunk deep into the ground.  "And where do you think you're going?" she asked, putting a long, bony finger on his nose.  "You're going nowhere until you answer my question.  And you'd better tell me the truth."

Ned's mind, such as it was, raced to try to assess his situation.  Somehow this witch had eavesdropped on his conversation with Belinda and knew the mission on which he had been sent.  Had she also read his mind and discovered the alternatives he had considered?  He decided that his safest option was to assume that she had and to tell the truth.  "Not if you promise to play no more nasty tricks on Belinda."

The witch cackled again and said, "So she's got you believing that ridiculous story too, eh?  Well, that's hardly surprising - there's no bigger fool than a love-sick fool.  The truth is that I was wandering around the town learning as much as I could about the latest progress made by human alchemists in the hope that some of it would be useful to us for mixing magic potions, when for some reason she started to fill everyone's head with the idea that I was out to harm them.  I thought that if I could make her look ridiculous nobody would believe her; so I played an embarrassing trick on her, and that's the only nasty trick I ever..."

"Your trick proved to everyone that they were right to fear you in the first place!" Ned interrupted.

"Well, what else was I supposed to do?" she whined, sounding more like a flustered young girl than an in-control witch.  "I tried entertaining them with my magic, I even tried using it to do them favours, but she managed to convince them all that everything I did would some day harm them.  They got so scared they started chasing me away with flaming sticks whenever they saw me!  Sure, my one nasty trick only made things worse, but it's not as if I were getting anywhere without it.  If you're so smart, perhaps you could advise me from your vast experience just what I have to do to get people to accept me!"

Ned's fear of this witch dissolved in a wave of sympathy.  She was infinitely more clever and powerful than he was, she had him at her mercy - and here she was confessing to him that she was just as vulnerable as he was and asking his advice!  From his own vast experience, he had only one honest piece of advice to give: "Some people just aren't going to accept you no matter what you do.  Ignore them and find someone who will."

"Like who, for instance?" she retorted skeptically.  "You?  Belinda's lover?"

"Well, why not?" he answered enthusiastically.  "That way we all come out winners.  She gets reassured that you won't bother her anymore.  I get to marry her and to get entertained by your magic tricks, which I think are really neat.  And you get to show off your stuff and to listen to some really neat songs I wrote - as soon as you give me my lute back - plus she won't be sending anyone else to do you in.  Is it a deal?"

The witch smiled and said with a cackle: "Well, why not?  There are a lot of tricks I've been dying to show off, but I can't do them here because they require ingredients I have at home.  Hop on my broomstick behind me and hold on tight!"

The ride over the treetops was scary at first, but it was the most thrilling experience of his life - with the possible exception of his most recent visits to Belinda.  All too soon it was over: they sank down between the trees, landed at the door of a thatched hut, and entered.  It was the dirtiest, most disorganized dwelling he had ever seen: bottles, test-tubes, pieces of parchment and other sundry objects littered every surface but the floor, and this was covered by a foot-thick carpet of dust.  The witch introduced herself as Winnie, adding, "Surely you didn't think all witches were called Hazel, did you?  That would make witches' conferences extremely confusing!"  And then she proceeded to demonstrate her magic, bubbling with delight as she explained which of her tricks she had discovered herself and which she had learned from others.  After quite some time she said, "I've got lots more to show you, but that'll do for today.  Oh, and here's your lute.  Sing me some songs!"

Ned sang her three of his love songs and then, noticing her attention waning with each one, he stopped and asked, "You don't seem to be enjoying my songs!  What's wrong with them?"

"Well," she replied slowly, "You sing and play extremely well, and you do write beautiful melodies, but the lyrics ... well, let's just say that the subject matter is not exactly original.  Perhaps you could approach it from an alternative viewpoint, or else write songs about other subjects ... you know, for the sake of variety."

If Ned was going to persuade Winnie to continue carrying out her end of the bargain he would need more bargaining power than his songs could give him, given her inexplicable lack of enthusiasm for them.  Well, he had learned one thing in his life besides music, and the state of her house left him an ideal opportunity to demonstrate it to her, but he was going to have to be tactful about it.  "Uh, Winnie," he began tentatively, "Since you're so good at making things disappear, how about applying your magic to all this dust?"

Winnie laughed.  "I can't make things cease to exist - that would violate some laws of physics that you humans may discover in a few hundred years.  I just make them invisible to humans.  I can teleport them one piece at a time, but to teleport all this dust out the door one speck at a time would take longer than cleaning it up by hand, and I'm a very busy witch.  Most witches just do the magic our foremothers have taught us, but a few of us are at the cutting edge of progress, as it were.  We discover new spells and potions and demonstrate them to each other at witches' conferences, and then they become part of our folklore."

"Well, I don't claim to be at the cutting edge of anything but a kitchen knife, but I am capable of making dirt disappear," Ned blustered.  "Brooms are useful for more than just transportation, you know!"

It took him three days to clean Winnie's house to his satisfaction, during which time she worked on her magic and showed it off whenever she could spare the time.  She was delighted with his handiwork.  "Do come again - in a week!" she implored.  "It should only take you one day to clean up then."

"All right," he replied, "But no tricks on Belinda in the meantime.  Is that a promise?"

Winnie nodded, they shook on it, and he made his way through the forest, back into town, and straight to the house of his beloved Belinda.  On his way, it occurred to him that if he pretended to have killed the witch it would be difficult to explain his weekly trips to her house in the woods.  Besides, he wasn't yet sure whether it was Belinda or Winnie who was telling him the truth, and he decided that the best way to find out was to be as truthful with Belinda as he had been with Winnie.