roof, dashed through the flames and arrows,
which could not pierce his body, and slew them all with his hammer.

And this maniac wandering endured many years.

And sea storms, and burning suns, and autumn frosts, and winter ice,
beat upon Halfred's half-naked body.

And his hair and beard stood out like a mane around him.

But no longer dark, as when of yore he trod, as a wooer. King
Harstein's courts--but snow white. In a single night--the night when
Thora died--his hair had become white.

CHAPTER XVII.

And after many years he came sailing in his rotten boat over the seas
which play around the island of Caledonia. He landed, seized his
hammer, and strode upwards to a steep rocky hill, on which sheep and
goats were grazing.

It was early morning, in the time when roses begin to bloom.

Mist floated over the sea, and upon the cliffs.

Then Halfred saw the shepherd standing above, on the cliff's edge; and
he played a lovely melody upon his shepherd's pipe.

And at first he doubted whether he should ask this shepherd boy his
question about the Gods, for he left women and boys unquestioned. And
this shepherd seemed to him but a boy.

But as he climbed nearer to him he saw that the shepherd carried a
spear, and a shepherd's sling, with which to kill wolves.

And the shepherd lad believed that this was a robber or a Berseker
coming against him and his sheep.

And he chose out of his leather pouch a sharp heavy stone, and laid it
in his sling, and held it ready to cast it.

Halfred held his left hand over the eye that remained to him, and
looked upward with difficulty, dazzled, for just then the sun broke out
through the mist clouds exactly above the head of the shepherd, who
thus saw clearly the figure of the half naked man, with tangled
floating hair and beard, who now raising the hammer threateningly
ascended the hill. Upon a slab of stone, under a great ash tree, he
stopped, and cried to the shepherd--

"Are there Gods, shepherd boy? Sayest thou yes, then thou must die."

"Gods, there are not," replied the shepherd, in a clear voice, "but
wise men have taught me there lives one Almighty Triune God, Creator of
Heaven and Earth."

The man with the hammer paused for a moment as if meditating.

Such an answer had he never received.

Soon, however, he sprang threateningly upwards again.

Preventing him, however, the shepherd swung his sling; whirring flew
the sharp