hout toil; but to-morrow night we may climb
up somewhere and look on what is toward."

So Ralph lay down and Ursula also, but Ralph lay long awake watching
the light above him, which grew fiercer and redder in the hours betwixt
moonset and daybreak, when he fell asleep, and woke not again till the
sun was high.

But on the next day as they went, the aspect of the rock-sea about them
changed: for the rocks were not so smooth and shining and orderly, but
rose up in confused heaps all clotted together by the burning, like to
clinkers out of some monstrous forge of the earth-giants, so that their
way was naught so clear as it had been, but was rather a maze of jagged
stone. But the Sage led through it all unfumbling, and moreover now
and again they came on that carven token of the sword and the bough.
Night fell, and as it grew dark they saw the glaring of the earth-fires
again; and when they were rested, and had done their meat, the Sage
said: "Come now with me, for hard by is there a place as it were a
stair that goeth to the top of a great rock, let us climb it and look
about us."

So did they, and the head of the rock was higher than the main face of
the rock-sea, so that they could see afar. Thence they looked north
and beheld afar off a very pillar of fire rising up from a ness of the
mountain wall, and seeming as if it bore up a black roof of smoke; and
the huge wall gleamed grey, because of its light, and it cast a ray of
light across the rock-sea as the moon doth over the waters of the deep:
withal there was the noise as of thunder in the air, but afar off:
which thunder indeed they had heard oft, as they rode through the
afternoon and evening.

Spake the Sage: "It is far away: yet if the wind were not blowing
from us, we had smelt the smoke, and the sky had been darkened by it.
Now it is naught so far from Utterbol, and it will be for a token to
them there. For that ness is called the Candle of the Giants, and men
deem that the kindling thereof forebodeth ill to the lord who sitteth
on the throne in the red hall of Utterbol."

Ralph laid his hand on Ursula's shoulder and said: "May the Sage's saw
be sooth!"

She put her hand upon the hand and said: "Three months ago I lay on my
bed at Bourton Abbas, and all the while here was this huge manless
waste lying under the bare heavens and threatened by the storehouse of
the fires of the earth: and I had not seen it, nor thee either, O
friend; and now it ha