Sooth
to say, except for the strait pass along the river at the eastern
end, and the wider pass at the western, they had no other way (save
one of which a word anon) out of the Dale but such as mountain goats
and bold cragsmen might take; and even of these but few.
This midway stream was called the Wildlake, and the way along it
Wildlake's Way, because it came to them out of the wood, which on
that north side stretched away from nigh to the lip of the valley-
wall up to the pine woods and the high fells on the east and north,
and down to the plain country on the west and south.
Now when the Weltering Water came out of the rocky tangle near the
pass, it was turned aside by the ground till it swung right up to the
feet of the Southern crags; then it turned and slowly bent round
again northward, and at last fairly doubled back on itself before it
turned again to run westward; so that when, after its second double,
it had come to flowing softly westward under the northern crags, it
had cast two thirds of a girdle round about a space of land a little
below the grassy knolls and tofts aforesaid; and there in that fair
space between the folds of the Weltering Water stood the Thorp
whereof the tale hath told.
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