Thou hast heard those names once before, friend?'
'Yea,' he said, and as he spoke the picture of that other day came
back to him, and he called to mind all that he had said, and his
happiness of that hour seemed the more and the sweeter for that
memory.
She went on: 'Fair and goodly is that Dale as mine own eyes have
seen, and plentiful of all things, and up in its mountains to the
east are caves and pits whence silver is digged abundantly; therefore
is the Dale called Silver-dale. Hast thou heard thereof, my friend?'
'Nay,' said Face-of-god, 'though I have marvelled whence ye gat such
foison of silver.'
He looked on her and marvelled, for now she seemed as if it were
another woman: her eyes were gleaming bright, her lips were parted;
there was a bright red flush on the pommels of her two cheeks as she
spake again and said:
'Happy lived the Folk in Silver-dale for many and many winters and
summers: the seasons were good and no lack was there: little
sickness there was and less war, and all seemed better than well. It
is strange that ye Dalesmen have not heard of Silver-dale.'
'Nay,' said he, 'but I have not; of Rose-dale have I heard, as a land
very far away: but no further do we know of toward that airt.
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