"GL3" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol08)

'Yes,' said Aragorn. '[Five >] Four days have we passed on
the road, and now six remain before the day that you appointed
for the assembly at Edoras.'
'Then here at Dunharrow maybe we can rest a while,' said the
King.
They came now [?under] dusk over a stone bridge across the

river; and when the head of [?his] long line had passed it a man
sounded a loud call upon [a] horn. It echoed in the valley, and
horn[s] answered it from far above. Lights sprang out and men
rode forward to meet them. King Theoden was welcomed back
with joy, and he rode on with Eomer and Aragorn and his
company up the steep winding path that led to the Hold of
Dunharrow on the mountain's knee. No foe could climb that
way while any defended it from above. [Looking back] Merry
was riding now on a pony furnished for him at Helm's Deep.
With him [? went] Legolas and Gimli. They looked back and
long after they had climbed high they could descry in the grey
dusk below the long winding line of the Riders of Rohan still
crossing by the bridge. Many men had followed Theoden from
Westfold.
So at last they came to the Hold - the mountain homes of
long forgotten folk. Dim legends only now remembered them.
Here they had dwelt [and had made a dark temple a temple
and holy place in the Dark Years] in fear under the shadow of
the Dark Years, before ever a ship came to Belfalas or Gondor
of the Kings was built. That was in the first [?reign] of Sauron
the [?Great] when Baraddur first was founded, but they had ...
[?him] and built a refuge ...... [?that no enemy] could take.
There was a wide upland [field > ?slope] set back into the
mountain - the lap of Dunharrow. Arms of the mountain
embraced [it] except only for a space upon the west. Here the
[?green bay] fell over a sheer brink down into Harrowdale. A
winding path led up.' Behind the sheer walls of the vale were
..... caves - made by ancient art. [?Water fell in a fall over the
........... and flowed ... the midst ...]
When the men of Gondor came [?there] the men of this place
lived for a while [?owning] no lord of Gondor. But what became
of them no legend knew. They had vanished and gone far away.

As my father wrote the end of this text he drew two little sketches of
the Hold of Dunharrow, and this page is reproduced on p. 239 (see
also note 6). These sketches show his earliest imagining of the Hold
very clearly: a natural 'amphitheatre' with caves in the further rock-
wall, and a stream (in text A stated to be the Snowbourn) falling
down from the heights behind and over the central door, thence
crossing the open space ('the lap of Dunharrow') and falling again
over the lower cliff up which the path climbs. It is less easy to be sure
of the situation of the Hold in relation to Harrowdale. When Theoden
and his company enter the dale 'the vast tumbled mass of great