en, freemen and thralls, wains and banners, with shouting and
laughter, and the noise of horns and the lowing of neat, till all that
plain's end was flooded with the host of the Markmen.

But when the eastern-abiders had crossed, they made no stay, but went
duly ordered about their banners, winding on toward the first of the
abodes on the western side of the water; because it was but a little way
southwest of this that the Thing-stead of the Upper-mark lay; and the
whole Folk was summoned thither when war threatened from the South, just
as it was called to the Thing-stead of the Nether-mark, when the threat
of war came from the North. But the western companies stayed on the brow
of that low hill till all the eastern men were over the river, and on
their way to the Thing-stead, and then they moved on.

So came the Wolfings and their fellows up to the dwellings of the
northernmost kindred, who were called the Daylings, and bore on their
banner the image of the rising sun. Thereabout was the Mark somewhat
more hilly and broken than in the Mid-mark, so that the Great Roof of the
Daylings, which was a very big house, stood on a hillock whose sides had
been cleft down sheer on all sides save one (which was left as a bridge)
by the labour of men, and it was a very defensible place.

Thereon were now gathered round about the Roof all the stay-at-homes of
the kindred, who greeted with joyous cries the men-at-arms as they
passed. Albeit one very old man, who sat in a chair near to the edge of
the sheer hill looking on the war array, when he saw the Wolfing banner
draw near, stood up to gaze on it, and then shook his head sadly, and
sank back again into his chair, and covered his face with his hands: and
when the folk saw that, a silence bred of the coldness of fear fell on
them, for that elder was deemed a foreseeing man.

But as those three fellows, of whose talk of yesterday the tale has told,
drew near and beheld what the old carle did (for they were riding
together this day also) the Beaming man laid his hand on Wolfkettle's
rein and said:

"Lo you, neighbour, if thy Vala hath seen nought, yet hath this old man
seen somewhat, and that somewhat even as the little lad saw it. Many a
mother's son shall fall before the Welshmen."

But Wolfkettle shook his rein free, and his face reddened as of one who
is angry, yet he kept silence, while the Elking said:

"Let be, Toti! for he that lives shall tell the tale to the fores