hee erst, shall end on the day whereon I am made all
happy. And it is thou that shall wield it all, my Master. Yet must my
wisdom needs endure for a little season yet. Let us on then, boldly and
happily."

CHAPTER XXVI: THEY COME TO THE FOLK OF THE BEARS

On they went, and before long they were come up on to the down-country,
where was scarce a tree, save gnarled and knotty thorn-bushes here and
there, but nought else higher than the whin. And here on these upper
lands they saw that the pastures were much burned with the drought,
albeit summer was not worn old. Now they went making due south toward
the mountains, whose heads they saw from time to time rising deep blue
over the bleak greyness of the down-land ridges. And so they went, till
at last, hard on sunset, after they had climbed long over a high bent,
they came to the brow thereof, and, looking down, beheld new tidings.

There was a wide valley below them, greener than the downs which they had
come over, and greener yet amidmost, from the watering of a stream which,
all beset with willows, wound about the bottom. Sheep and neat were
pasturing about the dale, and moreover a long line of smoke was going up
straight into the windless heavens from the midst of a ring of little
round houses built of turfs, and thatched with reed. And beyond that,
toward an eastward-lying bight of the dale, they could see what looked
like to a doom-ring of big stones, though there were no rocky places in
that land. About the cooking-fire amidst of the houses, and here and
there otherwhere, they saw, standing or going to and fro, huge figures of
men and women, with children playing about betwixt them.

They stood and gazed down at it for a minute or two, and though all were
at peace there, yet to Walter, at least, it seemed strange and awful. He
spake softly, as though he would not have his voice reach those men,
though they were, forsooth, out of earshot of anything save a shout: "Are
these then the children of the Bear? What shall we do now?"

She said: "Yea, of the Bear they be, though there be other folks of them
far and far away to the northward and eastward, near to the borders of
the sea. And as to what we shall do, let us go down at once, and
peacefully. Indeed, by now there will be no escape from them; for lo
you! they have seen us."

Forsooth, some three or four of the big men had turned them toward the
bent whereon stood the twain, and were hailing t