gnarled and ill-grown: therewithal the day was waning, and the sky
was quite clear again as the afternoon grew into a fair autumn
evening.

Now the trees failed altogether, and the slope grown steeper was
covered with heather and ling; and looking up, he saw before him
quite near by seeming in the clear even (though indeed they were yet
far away) the snowy peaks flushed with the sinking sun against the
frosty dark-grey eastern sky; and below them the dark rock-mountains,
and below these again, and nigh to him indeed, the fells covered with
pine-woods and looking like a wall to the heaths he trod.

He stayed a little while and turned his head to look at the way
whereby he had come; but that way a swell of the oak-forest hid
everything but the wood itself, making a wall behind him as the pine-
wood made a wall before. There came across him then a sharp memory
of the boding words which Stone-face had spoken last night, and he
felt as if he were now indeed within the trap. But presently he
laughed and said: 'I am a fool: this comes of being alone in the
dark wood and the dismal waste, after the merry faces of the Dale had
swept away my foolish musings of yesterday and the day before. Lo!
here I stand, a man of the Face, sword and axe by my side; if death
come, it can but come once; and if I fear not death, what shall make
me afraid? The Gods hate me not, and will not hurt me; and they are
not ugly, but beauteous.'

Therewith he strode on again, and soon came to a place where the
ground sank into a shallow valley and the ling gave place to grass
for a while, and there were tall old pines scattered about, and
betwixt them grey rocks; this he passed through, climbing a steep