ght was a-doing, round whose bole clung flocks
of wool from the sheep that drew around it in the hot summer-tide and
rubbed themselves against it, and the ground was trodden bare of grass
round the bole, and close to the trunk was worn into a kind of trench.
There then they laid Thiodolf, and they wondered that no blood came from
him, and that there was no sign of a shot-weapon in his body.

But as for him, when he fell, all memory of the battle and what had gone
before it faded from his mind, and he passed into sweet and pleasant
dreams wherein he was a lad again in the days before he had fought with
the three Hun-Kings in the hazelled field. And in these dreams he was
doing after the manner of young lads, sporting in the meadows, backing
unbroken colts, swimming in the river, going a-hunting with the elder
carles. And especially he deemed that he was in the company of one old
man who had taught him both wood-craft and the handling of weapons: and
fair at first was his dream of his doings with this man; he was with him
in the forge smithying a sword-blade, and hammering into its steel the
thin golden wires; and fishing with an angle along with him by the eddies
of Mirkwood-water; and sitting with him in an ingle of the Hall, the old
man telling a tale of an ancient warrior of the Wolfings hight Thiodolf
also: then suddenly and without going there, they were in a little
clearing of the woods resting after hunting, a roe-deer with an arrow in
her lying at their feet, and the old man was talking, and telling
Thiodolf in what wise it was best to go about to get the wind of a hart;
but all the while there was going on the thunder of a great gale of wind
through the woodland boughs, even as the drone of a bag-pipe cleaves to
the tune. Presently Thiodolf arose and would go about his hunting again,
and stooped to take up his spear, and even therewith the old man's speech
stayed, and Thiodolf looked up, and lo, his face was white like stone,
and he touched him, and he was hard as flint, and like the image of an
ancient god as to his face and hands, though the wind stirred his hair
and his raiment, as they did before. Therewith a great pang smote
Thiodolf in his dream, and he felt as if he also were stiffening into
stone, and he strove and struggled, and lo, the wild-wood was gone, and a
white light empty of all vision was before him, and as he moved his head
this became the Wolfing meadow, as he had known it so long, and ther