cross; and as we return, should they prove
too heavy for us, we shall be sure to find plenty of places on the way
in which we can conceal them till our next journey. Certainly one suit
of swan's feathers would be enough for the princess, but two are
always better. In those northern countries no one can have too many
travelling wrappers."

"No one will thank you for it," said stork-mamma; "but you are
master; and, excepting at breeding time, I have nothing to say."

In the Viking's castle on the wild moor, to which the storks
directed their flight in the following spring, the little maiden still
remained. They had named her Helga, which was rather too soft a name
for a child with a temper like hers, although her form was still
beautiful. Every month this temper showed itself in sharper
outlines; and in the course of years, while the storks still made
the same journeys in autumn to the hill, and in spring to the moors,
the child grew to be almost a woman, and before any one seemed aware
of it, she was a wonderfully beautiful maiden of sixteen. The casket
was splendid, but the contents were worthless. She was, indeed, wild
and savage even in those hard, uncultivated times. It was a pleasure
to her to splash about with her white hands in the warm blood of the
horse which had been slain for sacrifice. In one of her wild moods she
bit off the head of the black cock, which the priest was about to slay
for the sacrifice. To her foster-father she said one day, "If thine
enemy were to pull down thine house about thy ears, and thou shouldest
be sleeping in unconscious security, I would not wake thee; even if
I had the power I would never do it, for my ears still tingle with the
blow that thou gavest me years ago. I have never forgotten it." But
the Viking treated her words as a joke; he was, like every one else,
bewitched with her beauty, and knew nothing of the change in the
form and temper of Helga at night. Without a saddle, she would sit
on a horse as if she were a part of it, while it rushed along at
full speed; nor would she spring from its back, even when it
quarrelled with other horses and bit them. She would often leap from
the high shore into the sea with all her clothes on, and swim to
meet the Viking, when his boat was steering home towards the shore.
She once cut off a long lock of her beautiful hair, and twisted it
into a string for her bow. "If a thing is to be done well," said
she, "I must do it myself."

The V