[Illustration: A man and two elves watching clouds pour through a large
gate.]
Once upon a time a young husband and wife named Giles and Phyllida lived
in a cottage in the heart of a great plain. League upon league, the rich
land fell away to the west, there to end at a wall of high mountains
into whose fastnesses no one had ever ventured. Yet the mountains were
very beautiful. In the cold of a clear winter's day, the snowy summits
and rust-colored pinnacles shone bright and near at hand; in the spring,
fogs hid them, and lay like gray mantles upon the lower slopes. Midway
in the mountain wall, a wide chasm marked the entrance to a deep, gloomy
valley, out of which a roaring mountain torrent hurried, to lose itself
in the plain below. And because somewhere in the heart of this dark
valley storms were brewed, whose dark clouds, laden with lightning and
hail, poured from between the crags of the valley out over the land,
this valley was known as the Valley of Thunder. According to an old
legend, out of this valley a king should one day come to rule over the
people of the plain.
Giles and Phyllida kept house by themselves. They had two cows, one red
and white, the other black and white, a flock of hens, some hives of
bees, a white horse, a dog, and a cat. All day long Phyllida worked
happily at the household tasks, baking the sweet white bread and marking
the fresh golden butter into square pats, while Giles went out to work
in the waving grain; and Phyllida, watching from a window, would see the
sun flash on the uplifted blade of her husband's scythe.