ON the third day there was high-tide and great joy amongst all men from
end to end of the Dale; and the delivered thralls were feasted and made
much of by the kindreds, so that they scarce knew how to believe their
own five senses that told them the good tidings.
For none strove to grieve them and torment them; what they would, that
did they, and they had all things plenteously; since for all was there
enough and to spare of goods stored up for the Dusky Men, as corn and
wine and oil and spices, and raiment and silver. Horses were there also,
and neat and sheep and swine in abundance. Withal there was the good and
dear land; the waxing corn on the acres; the blossoming vines on the
hillside; and about the orchards and alongside the ways, the plum-trees
and cherry-trees and pear-trees that had cast their blossom and were
overhung with little young fruit; and the fair apple-trees a-blossoming,
and the chestnuts spreading their boughs from their twisted trunks over
the green grass. And there was the goodly pasture for the horses and the
neat, and the thymy hill-grass for the sheep; and beyond it all, the
thicket of the great wood, with its unfailing store of goodly timber of
ash and oak and holly and yoke-elm. There need no man lack unless man
compelled him, and all was rich enough and wide enough for the waxing of
a very great folk.
Now, therefore, men betook them to what was their own before the coming
of the Dusky Men; and though at first many of the delivered thrall-folk
feasted somewhat above measure, and though there were some of them who
were not very brisk at working on the earth for their livelihood; yet
were the most part of them quick of wit and deft of hand, and they mostly
fell to presently at their cunning, both of husbandry and handicraft.
Moreover, they had great love of the kindreds, and especially of the
Woodlanders, and strove to do all things that might pleasure them. And
as for those who were dull and listless because of their many torments of
the last ten years, they would at least fetch and carry willingly for
them of the kindreds; and these last grudged them not meat and raiment
and house-room, even if they wrought but little for it, because they
called to mind the evil days of their thralldom, and bethought them how
few are men’s days upon the earth.
Thus all things throve in Silver-dale, and the days wore on toward the
summer, and the Yule-tide rest beyond it, and the years beyond and far
beyond the winning of Silver-dale.