High aloft floated the light clouds over the Dale; deep blue
showed the distant fells below the ice-mountains; the waters
dwindled; all things sought the shadow by daytime, and the twilight
of even and the twilight of dawn were but sundered by three hours of
half-dark night.
So in the bright forenoon were seventeen brides assembled in the Gate
of Burgstead (but of the rest of the Dale were twenty and three
looked for), and with these was the Sun-beam, her face as calm as the
mountain lake under a summer sunset, while of the others many were
restless, and babbling like April throstles; and not a few talked to
her eagerly, and in their restless love of her dragged her about
hither and thither.
No men were to be seen that morning; for such was the custom, that
the carles either departed to the fields and the acres, or abode
within doors on the morn of the day of the Maiden Ward; but there was
a throng of women about the Gate and down the street of Burgstead,
and it may well be deemed that they kept not silence that hour.
So fared the Brides of Burgstead to the place of the Maiden Ward on
the causeway, whereto were come already the other brides from steads
up and down the Dale, or were even then close at hand on the way; and
among them were Long-coat and her two fellows, with whom Face-of-god
had held converse on that morning whereon he had followed his fate to
the Mountain.
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