horn hath sounded, and the Thing is hallowed in.
Will ye hear or forbear to hearken the tale there is to tell?
There are many mouths to tell it, and a many know it well.
And the tale is this, that the foemen against our kindreds fare
Who eat the meadows desert, and burn the desert bare."

Then sat he down on the turf seat; but there arose a murmur in the
assembly as of men eager to hearken; and without more ado came a man out
of a company of the Upper-mark, and clomb up to the top of the Speech-
Hill, and spoke in a loud voice:

"I am Bork, a man of the Geirings of the Upper-mark: two days ago I and
five others were in the wild-wood a-hunting, and we wended through the
thicket, and came into the land of the hill-folk; and after we had gone a
while we came to a long dale with a brook running through it, and yew-
trees scattered about it and a hazel copse at one end; and by the copse
was a band of men who had women and children with them, and a few neat,
and fewer horses; but sheep were feeding up and down the dale; and they
had made them booths of turf and boughs, and were making ready their
cooking fires, for it was evening. So when they saw us, they ran to
their arms, but we cried out to them in the tongue of the Goths and bade
them peace. Then they came up the bent to us and spake to us in the
Gothic tongue, albeit a little diversely from us; and when we had told
them what and whence we were, they were glad of us, and bade us to them,
and we went, and they entreated us kindly, and made us such cheer as they
might, and gave us mutton to eat, and we gave them venison of the wild-
wood which we had taken, and we abode with them there that night.

"But they told us that they were a house of the folk of the herdsmen, and
that there was war in the land, and that the people thereof were fleeing
before the cruelty of a host of warriors, men of a mighty folk, such as
the earth hath not heard of, who dwell in great cities far to the south;
and how that this host had crossed the mountains, and the Great Water
that runneth from them, and had fallen upon their kindred, and overcome
their fighting-men, and burned their dwellings, slain their elders, and
driven their neat and their sheep, yea, and their women and children in
no better wise than their neat and sheep.

"And they said that they had fled away thus far from their old
habitations, which were a long way to the south, and were now at point to
build them dw