As he sat down he glanced at the dale below him with a well-pleased
look, and then cast his eyes down to the grass at his feet, as though
to hold a little longer all unchanged the image of the fair place he
had just seen. The sun was low in the heavens, and his slant beams
fell yellow all up the dale, gilding the chestnut groves grown dusk
and grey with autumn, and the black masses of the elm-boughs, and
gleaming back here and there from the pools of the Weltering Water.
Down in the midmost meadows the long-horned dun kine were moving
slowly as they fed along the edges of the stream, and a dog was
bounding about with exceeding swiftness here and there among them.
At a sharply curved bight of the river the man could see a little
vermilion flame flickering about, and above it a thin blue veil of
smoke hanging in the air, and clinging to the boughs of the willows
anear; about it were a dozen menfolk clear to see, some sitting, some
standing, some walking to and fro, but all in company together: four
of were brown-clad and short-skirted like himself, and from above the
hand of one came a flash of light as the sun smote upon the steel of
his spear. The others were long-skirted and clad gayer, and amongst
them were red and blue and green and white garments, and they were
clear to be seen for women. Just as the young man looked up again,
those of them who were sitting down rose up, and those that were
strolling drew nigh, and they joined hands together, and fell to
dancing on the grass, and the dog and another one with him came up to
the dancers and raced about and betwixt them; and so clear to see
were they all and so little, being far away, that they looked like
dainty well-wrought puppets.

The young man sat smiling at it for a little, and then rose up and
shouldered his venison, and went down into Wildlake's Way, and