with a wide face, which was terrible to behold, although it smiled:
he bore a bent bow in his hand with an arrow fitted to its string,
and about the head of him was a ring of rays like the beams of the
sun, and at his feet was a dragon, which had crept, as it were, from
amidst of the blossomed knots of the door-post wherewith the tail of
him was yet entwined. And this head with the ring of rays about it
was wrought into the adornment of that house, both within and
without, in many other places, but on never another house of the
Dale; and it was called the House of the Face. Thereof hath the tale
much to tell hereafter, but as now it goeth on to tell of the ways of
life of the Dalesmen.

In Burgstead was no Mote-hall or Town-house or Church, such as we wot
of in these days; and their market-place was wheresoever any might
choose to pitch a booth: but for the most part this was done in the
wide street betwixt the gate and the bridge. As to a meeting-place,
were there any small matters between man and man, these would the
Alderman or one of the Wardens deal with, sitting in Court with the
neighbours on the wide space just outside the Gate: but if it were
to do with greater matters, such as great manslayings and blood-
wites, or the making of war or ending of it, or the choosing of the
Alderman and the Wardens, such matters must be put off to the Folk-
mote, which could but be held in the place aforesaid where was the
Doom-ring and the Altar of the Gods; and at that Folk-mote both the
Shepherd-Folk and the Woodland-Carles foregathered with the Dalesmen,
and duly said their say. There also they held their great casts and
made offerings to the Gods for the Fruitfulness of the Year, the
ingathering of the increase, and in Memory of their Forefathers.
Natheless at Yule-tide also they feasted from house to house to be
glad with the rest of Midwinter, and many a cup drank at those feasts