infully, and approaching the fire sat
down before it, bending her haggard features over the brilliant flames.
For a few minutes she remained absorbed in her evil thoughts, but no
articulate word escaped her; and when at length she again abruptly
broke the silence, it was not to address the Goth or to fix her eyes on
him as before.

Still cowering over the fire, apparently as regardless of the presence
of the two beings whose happiness she had just crushed for ever as if
they had never existed, she began to recite, in solemn, measured,
chanting tones, a legend of the darkest and earliest age of Gothic
history, keeping time to herself with the knife that she still held in
her hand. The malignity in her expression, as she pursued her
employment, betrayed the heartless motive that animated it, almost as
palpably as the words of the composition she was repeating: thus she
now spoke:--

'The tempest-god's pinions o'ershadow the sky,
The waves leap to welcome the storm that is nigh,
Through the hall of old Odin re-echo the shocks
That the fierce ocean hurls at his rampart of rocks,
As, alone on the crags that soar up from the sands,
With his virgin SIONA the young AGNAR stands;
Tears sprinkle their dew on the sad maiden's cheeks,
And the voice of the chieftain sinks low while he speaks:

"Crippled in the fight for ever,
Number'd with the worse than slain;
Weak, deform'd, disabled!--never
Can I join the hosts again!
With the battle that is won
AGNAR'S earthly course is run!

"When thy shatter'd frame must yield,
If thou seek'st a future field;
When thy arm, that sway'd the strife,
Fails to shield thy worthless life;
When thy hands no more afford
Full employment to the sword;
Then, preserve--respect thy name;
Meet thy death--to live is shame!
Such is Odin's mighty will;
Such commands I now fulfil!"'

At this point in the legend, she paused and turned suddenly to observe
its effect on Hermanric. All its horrible application to himself
thrilled through his heart. His head drooped, and a low groan burst
from his lips. But even this evidence of the suffering she was
inflicting failed to melt the iron malignity of Goisvintha's
determination.

'Do you remember the death of Agnar?' she cried. 'When you were a
child, I sung it to you ere you slept, and you vowed as you heard it,
that when you were a man, if you suffere