Then ran the
folk together to hale off the stranger and help the shepherd, and it
was like that the stranger should be mishandled. Then there thrust
through the press a young man with yellow hair and grey eyes, who
cried out, "Fellows, let be! The stranger had the right of it; this
is no matter to make a quarrel or a court case of. Let the market go
on! This man and maid are true folk." So when the folk heard the
young man and his bidding, they forebore and let the carle and the
queen be, and the shepherd went his ways little hurt. Now then, who
was this young man?'
Quoth Gold-mane: 'It was even I, and meseemeth it was no great deed
to do.'
'Yea,' she said, 'and the big carle was my brother, and the tall
queen, it was myself.'
'How then,' said he, 'for she was as dark-skinned as a dwarf, and
thou so bright and fair?'
She said: 'Well, if the woods are good for nothing else, yet are
they good for the growing of herbs, and I know the craft of simpling;
and with one of these herbs had I stained my skin and my brother's
also. And it showed the darker beneath the white coif.'
'Yea,' said he, 'but why must ye needs fare in feigned shapes? Ye
would have been welcome guests in the Dale howsoever ye had come.
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