vales was very pleasant to them.

At last these said valleys came often and oftener, till it was so that
all was pretty much one valley, whiles broken by a mountain neck,
whiles straitened by a ness of the mountains that jutted into it, but
never quite blind: yet was the said valley very high up, and as it
were a trench of the great mountain. So they were glad that they had
escaped from that strait prison betwixt the rock-walls, and were well
at ease: and they failed never to find the tokens that led them on the
way, even as they had learned of the Sage, so that they were not
beguiled into any straying.

And now they had worn away thirty days since they had parted from the
Sage, and the days began to shorten and the nights to lengthen apace;
when on the forenoon of a day, after they had ridden a very rugged
mountain-neck, they came down and down into a much wider valley into
which a great reef of rocks thrust out from the high mountain, so that
the northern half of the said vale was nigh cleft atwain by it; well
grassed was the vale, and a fair river ran through it, and there were
on either side the water great groves of tall and great sweet-chestnuts
and walnut trees, whereon the nuts were now ripe. They rejoiced as
they rode into it; for they remembered how the Sage had told them
thereof, that their travel and toil should be stayed there awhile, and
that there they should winter, because of the bread which they could
make them of the chestnuts, and the plenty of walnuts, and that withal
there was foison of venison.

So they found a ford of the river and crossed it, and went straight to
the head of the rocky ness, being shown thither by the lore of the
Sage, and they found in the face of the rock the mouth of a cavern, and
beside it the token of the sword and the branch. Therefore they knew
that they had come to their winter house, and they rejoiced thereat,
and without more ado they got off their horses and went into the
cavern. The entry thereof was low, so that they must needs creep into
it, but within it was a rock-hall, high, clean and sweet-smelling.

There then they dight their dwelling, doing all they might to be done
with their work before the winter was upon them. The day after they
had come there they fell to on the in-gathering of their chestnut
harvest, and they dried them, and made them into meal; and the walnuts
they gathered also. Withal they hunted the deer, both great and small;
amongst w