'
'Shall thy Dale--our Dale--be free from all trouble within itself
henceforward? Is there a wall built round it to keep out for ever
storm, pestilence, and famine, and the waywardness of its own folk?'
'So it is as thou sayest,' quoth Face-of-god, 'and to meet such
troubles and overcome them, or to die in strife with them, this is a
great part of a man's life.'
'Yea,' she said, 'and hast thou forgotten that thou art now a great
chieftain, and that the folk shall look to thee to use thee many days
in the year?'
He laughed and said: 'So it is. How many days have gone by since I
wandered in the wood last autumn, that the world should have changed
so much!'
'Many deeds shall now be in thy days,' she said, 'and each deed as
the corn of wheat from which cometh many corns; and a man's days on
the earth are not over many.'
'Then farewell, Silver-dale!' said he, waving his hand toward the
north. 'War and trouble may bring me back to thee, but it maybe
nought else shall. Farewell!'
She looked on him fondly but unsmiling, as he went beside her strong
and warrior-like. Three paces from him went Bow-may, barefoot, in
her white kirtle, but bearing her bow in her hand; a leash of arrows
was in her girdle, her quiver hung at her back, and she was girt with
a sword.
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