In such places must they needs rest them, to refresh their
horses as well as themselves, and to gather food, of venison,
and wild-fruit and nuts. But abiding in such 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.
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