The morning was clear, and Face-of-god
looking north-and-by-west deemed he saw smoke rising into the air
over the tree-covered ridges that hid the further distance toward
that airt, though further east uphove the black shoulders of the
Great that Waste and the snowy peaks behind them. The said smoke was
not such as cometh from one great fire, but was like a thin veil
staining the pale blue sky, as when men are burning ling on the
heath-side and it is seen aloof.
He showed that smoke to Stone-face, who smiled and said:
'Now will they be lighting the cooking fires in Rose-dale: would I
were there with a few hundreds of axes and staves at my back!'
'Yea,' said Face-of-god, smiling in his face, 'but where I pray thee
are these elves and wood-wights, that we meet them not? Grim things
there are in the woods, and things fair enough also: but meseemeth
that the trolls and the elves of thy young years have been frighted
away.'
Said Stone-face: 'Maybe, foster-son; that hath been seen ere now,
that when one race of man overrunneth the land inhabited by another,
the wights and elves that love the vanquished are seen no more, or
get them away far off into the outermost wilds, where few men ever
come.
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