The
hound skirted the water, and led on unchecked till the trees began to
grow smaller and the air colder for all that the sun was higher; for
they had been going up and up all the way.
So at last after a six hours' journey they came clean out of the
pine-wood, and before them lay the black wilderness of the bare
mountains, and beyond them, looking quite near now, the great ice-
peaks, the wall of the world. It was but an hour short of noon by
this time, and the high sun shone down on a barren boggy moss which
lay betwixt them and the rocky waste. Sure-foot made no stay, but
threaded the ways that went betwixt the quagmires, and in another
hour led Face-of-god into a winding valley blinded by great rocks,
and everywhere stony and rough, with a trickle of water running
amidst of it. The hound fared on up the dale to where the water was
bridged by a great fallen stone, and so over it and up a steep bent
on the further side, on to a marvellously rough mountain-neck, whiles
mere black sand cumbered with scattered rocks and stones, whiles
beset with mires grown over with the cottony mire-grass; here and
there a little scanty grass growing; otherwhere nought but dwarf
willow ever dying ever growing, mingled with moss or red-blossomed
sengreen; and all blending together into mere desolation.
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