place where it trickled into a pool, whence
it ran again in a thin thread down the dale, turning aside before it
reached the yew-wood to run its ways under low ledges of rock into a
wider dale. He looked at the pool and smiled to himself as if he had
thought of something that pleased him; then he drew a broad knife from
his side, and fell to cutting up turfs till he had what he wanted; and
then he brought stones to the place, and built a dam across the mouth of
the pool, and sat by on a great stone to watch it filling.

As he sat he strove to think about the Roman host and how he should deal
with it; but despite himself his thoughts wandered, and made for him
pictures of his life that should be when this time of battle was over; so
that he saw nothing of the troubles that were upon his hands that night,
but rather he saw himself partaking in the deeds of the life of man.
There he was between the plough-stilts in the acres of the kindred when
the west wind was blowing over the promise of early spring; or smiting
down the ripe wheat in the hot afternoon amidst the laughter and merry
talk of man and maid; or far away over Mirkwood-water watching the edges
of the wood against the prowling wolf and lynx, the stars just beginning
to shine over his head, as now they were; or wending the windless woods
in the first frosts before the snow came, the hunter's bow or javelin in
hand: or coming back from the wood with the quarry on the sledge across
the snow, when winter was deep, through the biting icy wind and the whirl
of the drifting snow, to the lights and music of the Great Roof, and the
merry talk therein and the smiling of the faces glad to see the hunting-
carles come back; and the full draughts of mead, and the sweet rest a
night-tide when the north wind was moaning round the ancient home.

All seemed good and fair to him, and whiles he looked around him, and saw
the long dale lying on his left hand and the dark yews in its jaws
pressing up against the rock-ledges of the brook, and on his right its
windings as the ground rose up to the buttresses of the great ridge. The
moon was rising over it, and he heard the voice of the brook as it
tinkled over the stones above him; and the whistle of the plover and the
laugh of the whimbrel came down the dale sharp and clear in the calm
evening; and sounding far away, because the great hill muffled them, were
the voices of his fellows on the ridge, and the songs of the warriors and