towers

of herbs and stewed rabbit 851
Sam laughed, for heart’s ease not for jest. They followed a
stream that went quickly down before them. Presently it
brought them to a small clear lake in a shallow dell: it lay in
the broken ruins of an ancient stone basin, the carven rim
of which was almost wholly covered with mosses and rosebrambles;
iris-swords stood in ranks about it, and water-lily
leaves floated on its dark gently-rippling surface; but it was
deep and fresh, and spilled ever softly out over a stony lip at
the far end.
Here they washed themselves and drank their fill at the
in-falling freshet. Then they sought for a resting-place, and
a hiding-place; for this land, fair-seeming still, was nonetheless
now territory of the Enemy. They had not come very far
from the road, and yet even in so short a space they had seen
scars of the old wars, and the newer wounds made by the
Orcs and other foul servants of the Dark Lord: a pit of
uncovered filth and refuse; trees hewn down wantonly and
left to die, with evil runes or the fell sign of the Eye cut in
rude strokes on their bark.
Sam scrambling below the outfall of the lake, smelling and
touching the unfamiliar plants and trees, forgetful for the
moment of Mordor, was reminded suddenly of their everpresent
peril. He stumbled on a ring still scorched by fire,
and in the midst of it he found a pile of charred and broken
bones and skulls. The swift growth of the wild with briar
and eglantine and trailing clematis was already drawing a veil
over this place of dreadful feast and slaughter; but it was
not ancient. He hurried back to his companions, but he said
nothing: the bones were best left in peace and not pawed and
routed by Gollum.
‘Let’s find a place to lie up in,’ he said. ‘Not lower down.
Higher up for me.’
A little way back above the lake they found a deep brown
bed of last year’s fern. Beyond it was a thicket of dark-leaved
bay-trees climbing up a steep bank that was crowned with
old cedars. Here they decided to rest and pass the day, which