Read "The Charwoman's Shadow" by Lord Dunsany online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Through the wood to which Ramon Alonzo had gone with his plans he walked disconsolate. What would he do when all his plans had succeeded and he had got back his shadow, if this sinister thing of gloom was to show at his heels whenever his human shadow should drink in the noonday sun? And his plans had seemed so sure.
Yet he was pledged to the knightly quest of the charwoman's shadow, whatever embarrassments might befall his own, and from this the laws of chivalry did not allow him to swerve. And the more that she was an ancient and withered crone, the more he knew that he must be true to his pledge, for she had no other knight; no sword would stir for her into the light but his. But he walked disconsolate because of his own redundance of shadows which he foresaw to the end of his days.