the Bears, as if she had
vanished away. But the men of that folk abode standing and worshipping
their God for a little while, and that while he durst not sunder him from
their company. But when they had blessed him and gone on their way
backward, he betook him in haste to following the Maid, thinking to find
her abiding him in some nook of the pass.

Howsoever, it was now twilight or more, and, for all his haste, dark
night overtook him, so that perforce he was stayed amidst the tangle of
the mountain ways. And, moreover, ere the night was grown old, the
weather came upon him on the back of a great south wind, so that the
mountain nooks rattled and roared, and there was the rain and the hail,
with thunder and lightning, monstrous and terrible, and all the huge
array of a summer storm. So he was driven at last to crouch under a big
rock and abide the day.

But not so were his troubles at an end. For under the said rock he fell
asleep, and when he awoke it was day indeed; but as to the pass, the way
thereby was blind with the driving rain and the lowering lift; so that,
though he struggled as well as he might against the storm and the tangle,
he made but little way.

And now once more the thought came on him, that the Maid was of the fays,
or of some race even mightier; and it came on him now not as erst, with
half fear and whole desire, but with a bitter oppression of dread, of
loss and misery; so that he began to fear that she had but won his love
to leave him and forget him for a new-comer, after the wont of fay-women,
as old tales tell.

Two days he battled thus with storm and blindness, and wanhope of his
life; for he was growing weak and fordone. But the third morning the
storm abated, though the rain yet fell heavily, and he could see his way
somewhat as well as feel it: withal he found that now his path was
leading him downwards. As it grew dusk, he came down into a grassy
valley with a stream running through it to the southward, and the rain
was now but little, coming down but in dashes from time to time. So he
crept down to the stream-side, and lay amongst the bushes there; and said
to himself, that on the morrow he would get him victual, so that he might
live to seek his Maiden through the wide world. He was of somewhat
better heart: but now that he was laid quiet, and had no more for that
present to trouble him about the way, the anguish of his loss fell upon
him the keener, and he might not refr