whence all was to be seen save where the
wood covered it; but just before where they now lay down there was no
wood, save low bushes, betwixt them and the rock-wall; and Walter noted
that whereas otherwhere, save in one place whereto their eyes were
turned, the cliffs seemed wellnigh or quite sheer, or indeed in some
places beetling over, in that said place they fell away from each other
on either side; and before this sinking was a slope or scree, that went
gently up toward the sinking of the wall. Walter looked long and
earnestly at this place, and spake nought, till the carle said: "What!
thou hast found something before thee to look on. What is it then?"

Quoth Walter: "Some would say that where yonder slopes run together up
towards that sinking in the cliff-wall there will be a pass into the
country beyond."

The carle smiled and said: "Yea, son; nor, so saying, would they err; for
that is the pass into the Bear-country, whereby those huge men come down
to chaffer with me."

"Yea," said Walter; and therewith he turned him a little, and scanned the
rock-wall, and saw how a few miles from that pass it turned somewhat
sharply toward the sea, narrowing the plain much there, till it made a
bight, the face whereof looked wellnigh north, instead of west, as did
the more part of the wall. And in the midst of that northern-looking
bight was a dark place which seemed to Walter like a downright shard in
the cliff. For the face of the wall was of a bleak grey, and it was but
little furrowed.

So then Walter spake: "Lo, old friend, there yonder is again a place that
meseemeth is a pass; whereunto doth that one lead?" And he pointed to
it: but the old man did not follow the pointing of his finger, but,
looking down on the ground, answered confusedly, and said:

"Maybe: I wot not. I deem that it also leadeth into the Bear-country by
a roundabout road. It leadeth into the far land."

Walter answered nought: for a strange thought had come uppermost in his
mind, that the carle knew far more than he would say of that pass, and
that he himself might be led thereby to find the wondrous three. He
caught his breath hardly, and his heart knocked against his ribs; but he
refrained from speaking for a long while; but at last he spake in a sharp
hard voice, which he scarce knew for his own: "Father, tell me, I adjure
thee by God and All-hallows, was it through yonder shard that the road
lay, when thou must needs make thy first