Nor may I hide that we
sometimes went lifting otherwhere; for in the summer and autumn we
would fare west a little and abide in the woods the season through,
and hunt the deer thereof, and whiles would we drive the spoil from
the scattered folk not far from your Shepherd-Folk; but with the
Shepherds themselves and with you Dalesmen we meddled not.
'Now that little wood-lawn with the toft of an ancient dwelling in
it, wherein, saith Bow-may, thou didst once rest, was one of our
summer abodes; and later on we built the hall under the pine-wood
that thou knowest.
'Thus then grew up our young men; and our maids were little softer;
e'en such as Bow-may is (and kind is she withal), and it seemed in
very sooth as if the Spirit of the Wolf was with us, and the
roughness of the Waste made us fierce; and law we had not and heeded
not, though love was amongst us.'
She stopped awhile and fell a-musing, and her face softened, and she
turned to him with that sweet happy look upon it and said:
'Desolate and dreary is the Dale, thou deemest, friend; and yet for
me I love it and its dark-green water, and it is to me as if the
Fathers of the kindred visit it and hold converse with us; and there
I grew up when I was little, before I knew what a woman was, and
strange communings had I with the wilderness.
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