'
But the whole vanward as they came up stayed to behold the sight of
the mountains on the other side of Silver-dale, and the banners of
the Folk hung over their heads, moving but little in the soft air of
the evening: so went they on their ways.
The sun sank, and dusk came on them as they followed down the stream,
and night came, and was clear and starlit, though the moon was not
yet risen. Now was the ground firm and the grass sweet and flowery,
and wind-worn bushes were scattered round about them, as they began
to go down into the ghyll that cleft the wall of Silver-dale, and the
night-wind blew in their faces from the very Dale and place of the
Battle to be. The path down was steep at first, but the ghyll was
wide, and the sides of it no longer straight walls, as in the gaps of
their earlier journey, but broken, sloping back, and (as they might
see on the morrow) partly of big stones and shaly grit, partly grown
over with bushes and rough grass, with here and there a little stream
trickling down their sides. As they went, the ghyll widened out,
till at last they were in a valley going down to the plain, in places
steep, in places flat and smooth, the stream ever rattling down the
midst of it, and they on the west side thereof.
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