For not yet through the wood and its tangle ye wander; Now skirt we no thicket, no path by the mere; Far aloof for our feet leads the Dale-road out yonder; Full fair is the morning, its doings all clear. There is nought now our feet on the highway delaying Save the friend’s loving-kindness, the sundering of speech; The well-willer’s word that ends words with the saying, The loth to depart while each looketh on each. Fare on then, for nought are ye laden with sorrow; The love of this land do ye bear with you still. In two Dales of the earth for to-day and to-morrow Is waxing the oak-tree of peace and good-will. Thus then they departed from Silver-dale, even as men who were a portion thereof, and had not utterly left it behind. And that night they lay in the wild-wood not very far from the Dale’s end; for they went softly, faring amongst so many friends. CHAPTER LVI. TALK UPON THE WILD-WOOD WAY. ON the morrow morning when they were on their way again Face-of-god left his own folk to go with the House of the Steer a while; and amongst them he fell in with the Sun-beam going along with Bow-may. So they greeted him kindly, and Face-of-god fell into talk with the Sun-beam as they went side by side through a great oak-wood, where for a space was plain green-sward bare of all underwood. So in their talk he said to her: ‘What deemest thou, my speech-friend, concerning our coming back to guest in Silver-dale one day?’ ‘The way is long,’ she said. ‘That may hinder us but not stay us,’ said Face-of-god. ‘That is sooth,’ said the Sun-beam. Said Face-of-god: ‘What things shall stay us? Or deemest thou that we shall never see Silver-dale again?’ She smiled: ‘Even so I think thou deemest, Gold-mane. But many things shall hinder us besides the long road.’ Said he: ‘Yea, and what things?’ ‘Thinkest thou,’ said the Sun-beam, ‘that the winning of Silver-stead is the last battle which thou shalt see?’ ‘Nay,’ said he, ‘nay.’ ‘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.’