Yet had not their numbers in Silver-dale
diminished; because two years after they (the speakers) had fled,
came three more Dusky Companies or Tribes into Silver-dale, and each
of these tribes was of three long hundreds; and with their coming had
the cruelty and misery much increased in the Dale, so that the
thralls began to die fast; and that drave the Dusky Men beyond the
borders of Silver-dale, so that they fell upon Rose-dale. When asked
how many of the kindreds might yet be abiding in Silver-dale, their
faces clouded, and they seemed exceeding wroth, and answered, that
they would willingly hope that most of those that had not been slain
at the time of the overthrow were now dead, yet indeed they feared
there were yet some alive, and mayhappen not a few women.
By then must they get on foot again, and so the talk fell between
them; but when they made stay for the night, after they had done
their meat, Face-of-god prayed Dallach bring to him some of the
latest-come folk from Silver-dale, and he brought to him the man and
the woman who had been in the Dale within that moon. As to the man,
if those of the Earl-folk had been few-spoken from fierceness and
wildness, he was no less so from mere dulness and weariness of
misery; but the woman's tongue went glibly enough, and it seemed to
pleasure her to talk about her past miseries.
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