When the warriors and the others had gone down to the mead, the Hall-Sun was left standing on the Hill of Speech, and she stood there till she saw the host in due array going on its ways dark and bright and beautiful; then she made as if to turn aback to the Great Roof; but all at once it seemed to her as if something held her back, as if her will to move had departed from her, and that she could not put one foot before the other. So she lingered on the Hill, and the quenched candle fell from her hand, and presently she sank adown on the grass and sat there with the face of one thinking intently. Yet was it with her that a thousand thoughts were in her mind at once and no one of them uppermost, and images of what had been and what then was flickered about in her brain, and betwixt them were engendered images of things to be, but unstable and not to be trowed in. So sat the Hall-Sun on the Hill of Speech lost in a dream of the day, whose stories were as little clear as those of a night-dream. But as she sat musing thus, came to her a woman exceeding old to look on, whom she knew not as one of the kindred or a thrall; and this carline greeted her by the name of Hall-Sun and said: "Hail, Hall-Sun of the Markmen! how fares it now with thee When the whelps of the Woodbeast wander with the Leafage of the Tree All up the Mirkwood-water to seek what they shall find, The oak-boles of the battle and the war-wood stark and blind?" Then answered the maiden: "It fares with me, O mother, that my soul would fain go forth To behold the ways of the battle, and the praise of the warriors' worth. But yet is it held entangled in a maze of many a thing, As the low-grown bramble holdeth the brake-shoots of the Spring. I think of the thing that hath been, but no shape is in my thought; I think of the day that passeth, and its story comes to nought. I think of the days that shall be, nor shape I any tale. I will hearken thee, O mother, if hearkening may avail." The Carline gazed at her with dark eyes that shone brightly from amidst her brown wrinkled face: then she sat herself down beside her and spake: "From a far folk have I wandered and I come of an alien blood, But I know all tales of the Wolfings and their evil and their good; And when I heard of thy fairness, thereof I heard it said, That for thee should be never a bridal nor a place in the warrior's bed." The maiden neither reddened nor paled, but looking with calm steady eyes into the Carline's face she answered: "Yea true it is, I am wedded to the mighty ones of old, And the fathers of the Wolfings ere the days of field and fold." Then a smile came into the eyes of the old woman and she said. "How glad shall be thy mother of thy worship and thy worth, And the father that begat thee if yet they dwell on earth!" But the Hall-Sun answered in the same steady manner as before: