and there a dreary
mire where the white-tufted rushes shook in the wind, and here and there
stretches of moss blended with red-blossomed sengreen; and otherwhere
nought but the wind-bitten creeping willow clinging to the black sand,
with a white bleached stick and a leaf or two, and again a stick and a
leaf. In the offing looking landward were great mountains, some very
great and snow-capped, some bare to the tops; and all that was far away,
save the snow, was deep-blue in the sunny morning. But about him on the
heath were scattered rocks like the reef beneath which he had slept the
last night, and peaks, and hammers, and knolls of uncouth shapes.

Then he went to the edge of the cliffs and looked down on the sea which
lay wrinkled and rippling on toward the shore far below him, and long he
gazed thereon and all about, but could see neither ship nor sail, nor
aught else save the washing of waves and the hovering of sea fowl.

Then he said: "Were it not well if I were to seek that house-master of
whom Fox spake? Might he not flit me at least to the Land of the
Glittering Plain? Woe is me! now am I of that woful company, and I also
must needs cry out, Where is the land? Where is the land?"

Therewith he turned toward the reef above their lair, but as he went he
thought and said: "Nay, but was not this Stead a lie like the rest of
Fox's tale? and am I not alone in this sea-girt wilderness? Yea, and
even that image of my Beloved which I saw in the dream, perchance that
also was a mere beguiling; for now I see that the Puny Fox was in all
ways wiser than is meet and comely." Yet again he said: "At least I will
seek on, and find out whether there be another man dwelling on this
hapless Isle, and then the worst of it will be battle with him, and death
by point and edge rather than by hunger; or at the best we may become
friends and fellows and deliver each other." Therewith he came to the
reef, and with much ado climbed to the topmost of its rocks and looked
down thence landward: and betwixt him and the mountains, and by seeming
not very far off, he saw smoke arising: but no house he saw, nor any
other token of a dwelling. So he came down from the stone and turned his
back upon the sea and went toward that smoke with his sword in its
sheath, and his spear over his shoulder. Rough and toilsome was the way:
three little dales he crossed amidst the mountain necks, each one narrow
and bare, with a stream of water amidst