noon
`` Ah , my lord , '' breathed the girl , `` I have very often slept there . '' `` And what shall we do for food , Isoult ? '' `` I will provide for that , my lord . '' It was by this time high noon , hot and still . Having climbed the ridge , they found themselves at the edge of a dense beech-wood , to which there appeared no end . From their vantage-ground they could see that the land sloped very gradually away into the distance ; upon it the giant trees stood like pillars of a church , whose floor was brown with the waste and litter of a hundred years . Long alleys of shade stretched out on all sides of them into the dark unknown of Mid-Morgraunt ; there seemed either no way or countless ways before them , and one as good as the other .