g pause.

"No, no, not vexed," said Amroth, "but I am not sure whether I have not
made a mistake. It was I who urged that you might go forward, and I
confess I am disappointed at the result. You are softer than I thought."

"Indeed I am not," I said. "I will go down the rocks and come up again,
if that will satisfy you."

"Come, that is a little better," said Amroth, "and I will tell you now
that you did well--better indeed at the time than I expected. You did
the thing in very good time, as we used to say."

By this time I felt very drowsy, and suddenly dropped off into a
sleep--such a deep and dreamless sleep, to descend into which was like
flinging oneself into a river-pool by a bubbling weir on a hot and dusty
day of summer.

I awoke suddenly with a pressure on my arm, and, waking up with a sense
of renewed freshness, I saw Amroth looking at me anxiously. "Do not
say anything," he said. "Can you manage to hobble a few steps? If you
cannot, I will get some help, and we shall be all right--but there may
be an unpleasant encounter, and it is best avoided." I scrambled to my
feet, and Amroth helped me a little higher up the rocks, looking
carefully into the mist as he did so. Close behind us was a steep rock
with ledges. Amroth flung himself upon them, with an agile scramble or
two. Then he held his hand down, lying on the top; I took it, and,
stiffened as I was, I contrived to get up beside him. "That is right,"
he said in a whisper. "Now lie here quietly, don't speak a word, and
just watch."

I lay, with a sense of something evil about. Presently I heard the sound
of voices in the mist to the left of us; and in an instant there loomed
out of the mist the form of a man, who was immediately followed by three
others. They were different from all the other spirits I had yet
seen--tall, lean, dark men, very spare and strong. They looked carefully
about them, mostly glancing down the cliff, and sometimes conferred
together. They were dressed in close-fitting dark clothes, which seemed
as if made out of some kind of skin or untanned leather, and their whole
air was sinister and terrifying. They passed quite close beneath us, so
that I saw the bald head of one of them, who carried a sort of hook in
his hands.

When they got to the place where my climb had ended, they stopped and
examined the stones carefully: one of them clambered a few feet down the
cliff. Then he came back and seemed to make a brief report, after wh