uted
back in answer; but all was still when the sound of his voice had died
out.

At last, when they were pressing on again after a short while of resting,
Hallblithe cried out that the cave was lightening: so they hastened
onward, and the light grew till they could dimly see each other, and
dimly they beheld the cave that it was both wide and high. Yet a little
further, and their faces showed white to one another, and they could see
the crannies of the rocks, and the bats hanging garlanded from the roof.
So then they came to where the day streamed down bright on them from a
break overhead, and lo! the sky and green leaves waving against it.

To those way-worn men it seemed hard to clamber out that way, and
especially to the elders: so they went on a little further to see if
there were aught better abiding them, but when they found the daylight
failing them again, they turned back to the place of the break in the
roof, lest they should waste their strength and perish in the bowels of
the mountain. So with much ado they hove up Hallblithe till he got him
first on to a ledge of the rocky wall, and so, what by strength, what by
cunning, into the daylight through the rent in the roof. So when he was
without he made a rope of his girdle and strips from his raiment, for he
was ever a deft craftsman, and made a shift to heave up therewith the sad
man, who was light and lithe of body; and then the two together dealt
with the elders one after another, till they were all four on the face of
the earth again.

The place whereto they had gotten was the side of a huge mountain, stony
and steep, but set about with bushes, which seemed full fair to those
wanderers amongst the rocks. This mountain-slope went down towards a
fair green plain, which Hallblithe made no doubt was the outlying waste
of the Glittering Plain: nay, he deemed that he could see afar off
thereon the white walls of the Uttermost House. So much he told the
seekers in few words; and then while they grovelled on the earth and wept
for pure joy, whereas the sun was down and it was beginning to grow dusk,
he went and looked around soberly to see if he might find water and any
kind of victual; and presently a little down the hillside he came upon a
place where a spring came gushing up out of the earth and ran down toward
the plain; and about it was green grass growing plentifully, and a little
thicket of bramble and wilding fruit-trees. So he drank of the water,