So a while they sat talking, all
of them, and the squire and the sergeant aforesaid were not a little
timorous of the adventure of making that stead unkenned their
sleeping chamber; and to while away the time, their lords made them
tell tales such as they knew concerning that place; and both they
said that they had never erst come into the dale but a very little
way, and said that they had done so then but trusting in their lords'
bidding and the luck of the Quest. Thereafter turned the talk as to
what had befallen Birdalone, and the chances of coming on her; and,
as folk will in such a plight, they talked the matter over and over
again till they were weary and could say no more.
Then they went to sleep, and nought befell them till they awoke in
the broad daylight; but they had little inkling of what hour it was,
for all the dale was full of thick white mist that came rolling down
from the mountains, so that they could scarce see their hands before
them, and there they had to tarry still, would they, would they not;
and the sergeant fell to telling tales of folk who had been lost in
that stony maze; and all of them deemed, more or less, that this was
the work either of evil wights, or it might be of the wizardry of the
Red Knight; and, to be short, they all deemed that he it was who had
wielded it, save the sergeant, who said that the mountain wights were
the masters and not the servants of him of the Red Hold.
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