their meat in Silver-dale_ _L_. _Folk-might seeth the Bride and speaketh 378 with her_ _LI_. _The Dead borne to bale_: _the Mote-house 382 re-hallowed_ _LII_. _Of the new Beginning of good Days in 384 Silver-dale_ _LIII_. _Of the Word which Hall-ward of the Steer 386 had for Folk-might_ _LIV_. _Tidings of Dallach_: _a Folk-mote in 391 Silver-dale_ _LV_. _Departure from Silver-dale_ 394 _LVI_. _Talk upon the Wild-wood Way_ 403 _LVII_. _How the Host came home again_ 404 _LVIII_. _How the Maiden Ward was held in Burgdale_ 409 _LIX_. _The Behest of Face-of-god to the Bride 418 accomplished_: _a Mote-stead appointed for the three Folks_, _to wit_, _the Men of Burgdale_, _the Shepherds_, _and the Children of the Wolf_ CHAPTER I. OF BURGSTEAD AND ITS FOLK AND ITS NEIGHBOURS. ONCE upon a time amidst the mountains and hills and falling streams of a fair land there was a town or thorp in a certain valley. This was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end the hills lowered somewhat, though they still ended in sheer rocks; but up from it, and more especially on the north side, they swelled into great shoulders of land, then dipped a little, and rose again into the sides of huge fells clad with pine-woods, and cleft here and there by deep ghylls: thence again they rose higher and steeper, and ever higher till they drew dark and naked out of the woods to meet the snow-fields and ice-rivers of the high mountains. But that was far away from the pass by the little river into the valley; and the said river was no drain from the snow-fields white and thick with the grinding of the ice, but clear and bright were its waters that came from wells amidst the bare rocky heaths. The upper end of the valley, where it first began to open out from the pass, was rugged and broken by rocks and ridges of water-borne stones, but presently it smoothed itself into mere grassy swellings and knolls, and at last into a fair and fertile plain swelling up into a green wave, as it were, against the rock-wall which encompassed it on all sides save where the river came gushing out of the strait pass at the east end, and where at the west end it poured itself out of the Dale toward the lowlands and the plain of the great river.