up to the Hall-Sun and spake to her.
But she kissed the lad on the forehead, and took Throng-plough, and wound
the peace-strings round him and laid him on the board before Thiodolf;
and then she spake softly as if to herself, yet so that some heard her:

"O father, no more shalt thou draw Throng-plough from the sheath till the
battle is pitched in the last field of fight, and the sons of the
fruitful Earth and the sons of Day meet Swart and his children at last,
when the change of the World is at hand. Maybe I shall be with thee
then: but now and in meanwhile, farewell, O mighty hand of my father!"

Thus then the Houses of the Mark held their High-tide of Returning under
the Wolfing Roof with none to blame them or make them afraid: and the
moon rose and the summer night wore on towards dawn, and within the Roof
and without was there feasting and singing and harping and the voice of
abundant joyance: for without the Roof feasted the thralls and the
strangers, and the Roman war-captives.

But on the morrow the kindreds laid their dead men in mound betwixt the
Great Roof and the Wild-wood. In one mound they laid them with the War-
dukes in their midst, and Arinbiorn by Otter's right side; and Thiodolf
bore Throng-plough to mound with him.

But a little way from the mound of their own dead, toward the south they
laid the Romans, a great company, with their Captain in the midst: and
they heaped a long mound over them not right high; so that as years wore,
and the feet of men and beasts trod it down, it seemed a mere swelling of
the earth not made by men's hands; and belike men knew not how many bones
of valiant men lay beneath; yet it had a name which endured for long, to
wit, the Battle-toft.

But the mound whereunder the Markmen were laid was called Thiodolf's Howe
for many generations of men, and many are the tales told of him; for men
were loth to lose him and forget him: and in the latter days men deemed
of him that he sits in that Howe not dead but sleeping, with
Throng-plough laid before him on the board; and that when the sons of the
Goths are at their sorest need and the falcons cease to sit on the ridge
of the Great Roof of the Wolfings, he will wake and come forth from the
Howe for their helping. But none have dared to break open that Howe and
behold what is therein.

But that swelling of the meadow where the Goths had their overthrow at
the hands of the Romans, and Thiodolf fell to earth unwounded, got a