d other
whiles, as it did chance, whether this way did be truly the olden way
that the Peoples of the Lesser Refuge did travel in the Olden Days. And
surely, as I did suppose, they had come some other way, or the Gorge to
be different and less dreadful in the far-off years. And this thing you
shall agree with me to be a reasonable thinking.

And after that the Monster had gone a good while we went onward again,
and with a great caution; and dreading alway lest that we come upon that
Monster, in the darkness; but yet did we know by smell, and by all our
consciousness, whether that we came nigh unto one of the monster Slugs.

Then, in the end of the fifth hour in the dark part of the Gorge, we
came by the mouth of that great cavern, upon our left; and you to
remember the same.

And I made pause in the darkness, and had the Maid very gentle by the
arm, that she should look with me. And I whispered how that I past this
place, to my right, upon mine upward way, and how that I did think
there to be a-plenty of monster caverns within the mountains that made
the sides of the Gorge, and that, mayhap, the Slug-Creatures had there
an home in such places, or came up, it might be, from some utter strange
deepness and mystery of the great world.

And the Maid did bide very close unto me, and silent, whilst that I
whispered; for the terror of the place did be on her, yet not to make
her lacking of courage, but yet to put a monstrous awe upon her and a
great and natural fear; and I likewise, as you do know.

And we stayed there, where we did be, a little moment, and looked
downward into the bowels of the monster cavern; and the shine of the
fire-hole beat over the cavern in the near part; but there did be an
utter mystery and deathly dark beyond the shining of the pit that did be
within, as you shall remember.

And, in verity, as we stayed but to glance, I perceived that there lay
humped things about the fire, and some to be black-seeming, and some to
have a seeming of whiteness, but with no sureness in the colour to mine
eyes.

And there came a moving in one of the humpt things, so that it did be as
that an hill did wake unto an horrid life. And immediately I knew that
the humps did be some utter monsters, mayhaps even the great Slugs,
a-slumber about the fire-pit that did burn in that strange deeply
cavern. And I saw that I did ill for our lives, that I should pause even
for a little moment to such staring.

And immediately