"So you have detected them!" he said. "You are quite
right, and it does your observation credit. But you must find it out for
yourself. I cannot explain, and if I could, you would not understand me
yet."
"Then I am not mistaken," I said, "but I wish you would give me a
hint--they seem to know something more worth knowing than all beside."
"Exactly," said Amroth. "You are very near the truth; it is staring you
in the face; but it would spoil all if I told you. There is plenty about
them in the old books you used to read--they have the secret of joy."
And that is all that he would say.
It was on a solitary ramble one day, outside of the place of delight,
that I came nearer to one of these people than I ever did at any other
time. I had wandered off into a pleasant place of grassy glades with
little thorn-thickets everywhere. I went up a small eminence, which
commanded a view of the beautiful plain with its blue distance and the
enamelled green foreground of close-grown coverts. There I sat for a
long time lost in pleasant thought and wonder, when I saw a man drawing
near, walking slowly and looking about him with a serene and delighted
air.
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