noon
Sure-foot led right into the heart of the pine-wood , and it was dark enough therein , with nought but a feeble glimmer for some while , and long was the way therethrough ; but in two hours ' space was there something of a break , and they came to the shore of a dark deep tarn on whose windless and green waters the daylight shone fully . The hound skirted the water , and led on unchecked till the trees began to grow smaller and the air colder for all that the sun was higher ; for they had been going up and up all the way . So at last after a six hours ' journey they came clean out of the pine-wood , and before them lay the black wilderness of the bare mountains , and beyond them , looking quite near now , the great ice-peaks , the wall of the world . It was but an hour short of noon by this time , and the high sun shone down on a barren boggy moss which lay betwixt them and the rocky waste . Sure-foot made no stay , but threaded the ways that went betwixt the quagmires , and in another hour led Face-of-god into a winding valley blinded by great rocks , and everywhere stony and rough , with a trickle of water running amidst of it . The hound fared on up the dale to where the water was bridged by a great fallen stone , and so over it and up a steep bent on the further side , on to a marvellously rough mountain-neck , whiles mere black sand cumbered with scattered rocks and stones , whiles beset with mires grown over with the cottony mire-grass ; here and there a little scanty grass growing ; otherwhere nought but dwarf willow ever dying ever growing , mingled with moss or red-blossomed sengreen ; and all blending together into mere desolation . Few living things they saw there ; up on the neck a few sheep were grazing the scanty grass , but there was none to tend them ; yet Face-of-god deemed the sight of them good , for there must be men anigh who owned them .