reen; and the neat-herds were done driving the milch-
kine to the byre, and the horseherds and the shepherds had made the night-
shift, and the out-goers were riding two by two and one by one through
the lanes between the wheat and the rye towards the meadow. Round the
cots of the thralls were gathered knots of men and women both thralls and
freemen, some talking together, some hearkening a song or a tale, some
singing and some dancing together; and the children gambolling about from
group to group with their shrill and tuneless voices, like young
throstles who have not yet learned the song of their race. With these
were mingled dogs, dun of colour, long of limb, sharp-nosed, gaunt and
great; they took little heed of the children as they pulled them about in
their play, but lay down, or loitered about, as though they had forgotten
the chase and the wild-wood.

Merry was the folk with that fair tide, and the promise of the harvest,
and the joy of life, and there was no weapon among them so close to the
houses, save here and there the boar-spear of some herdman or herd-woman
late come from the meadow.

Tall and for the most part comely were both men and women; the most of
them light-haired and grey-eyed, with cheek-bones somewhat high; white of
skin but for the sun's burning, and the wind's parching, and whereas they
were tanned of a very ruddy and cheerful hue. But the thralls were some
of them of a shorter and darker breed, black-haired also and dark-eyed,
lighter of limb; sometimes better knit, but sometimes crookeder of leg
and knottier of arm. But some also were of build and hue not much unlike
to the freemen; and these doubtless came of some other Folk of the Goths
which had given way in battle before the Men of the Mark, either they or
their fathers.

Moreover some of the freemen were unlike their fellows and kindred, being
slenderer and closer-knit, and black-haired, but grey-eyed withal; and
amongst these were one or two who exceeded in beauty all others of the
House.

Now the sun was set and the glooming was at point to begin and the
shadowless twilight lay upon the earth. The nightingales on the borders
of the wood sang ceaselessly from the scattered hazel-trees above the
greensward where the grass was cropped down close by the nibbling of the
rabbits; but in spite of their song and the divers voices of the men-folk
about the houses, it was an evening on which sounds from aloof can be
well heard, since