But as she sat musing thus, came to her a woman exceeding old to look on, whom she knew not as one of the kindred or a thrall; and this carline greeted her by the name of Hall-Sun and said: 

   “Hail, Hall-Sun of the Markmen! how fares it now with thee
   When the whelps of the Woodbeast wander with the Leafage of the Tree
   All up the Mirkwood-water to seek what they shall find,
   The oak-boles of the battle and the war-wood stark and blind?”

Then answered the maiden: 

“It fares with me, O mother, that my soul would fain go forth To behold the ways of the battle, and the praise of the warriors’ worth.  But yet is it held entangled in a maze of many a thing, As the low-grown bramble holdeth the brake-shoots of the Spring.  I think of the thing that hath been, but no shape is in my thought; I think of the day that passeth, and its story comes to nought.  I think of the days that shall be, nor shape I any tale.  I will hearken thee, O mother, if hearkening may avail.”

The Carline gazed at her with dark eyes that shone brightly from amidst her brown wrinkled face:  then she sat herself down beside her and spake: 

“From a far folk have I wandered and I come of an alien blood, But I know all tales of the Wolfings and their evil and their good; And when I heard of thy fairness, thereof I heard it said, That for thee should be never a bridal nor a place in the warrior’s bed.”

The maiden neither reddened nor paled, but looking with calm steady eyes into the Carline’s face she answered: 

   “Yea true it is, I am wedded to the mighty ones of old,
   And the fathers of the Wolfings ere the days of field and fold.”

Then a smile came into the eyes of the old woman and she said.

   “How glad shall be thy mother of thy worship and thy worth,
   And the father that begat thee if yet they dwell on earth!”

But the Hall-Sun answered in the same steady manner as before: 

   “None knoweth who is my mother, nor my very father’s name;
   But when to the House of the Wolfings a wild-wood waif I came,
   They gave me a foster-mother an ancient dame and good,
   And a glorious foster-father the best of all the blood.”

Spake the Carline.

“Yea, I have heard the story, but scarce therein might I trow That thou with all thy beauty wert born ’neath the oaken bough, And hast crawled a naked baby o’er the rain-drenched autumn-grass; Wilt thou tell the wandering woman what wise it cometh to pass That thou art the Mid-mark’s Hall-Sun, and the sign of the Wolfings’ gain?  Thou shalt pleasure me much by the telling, and there of shalt thou be fain.”

Then answered the Hall-Sun.