but as soon as they were alone, they
heard the child.

One night, when they had found no one to keep them company and
could not sleep for the child, Jofrid got up from her bed.

"You sleep, Toenne," she said. "If I keep awake, we will not hear
anything."

She went out and sat down on the doorstep, thinking of what they
ought to do to get peace, for they could not go on living as things
were. She wondered if confession and penance and mortification and
repentance could relieve them from this heavy punishment.

Then it happened that she raised her eyes and saw the same vision
as once before from this place. The pile of stones had changed to a
warrior. The night was quite dark, but still she could plainly see
that old King Atle sat there and watched her. She saw him so well
that she could distinguish the moss-grown bracelets on his wrists
and could see how his legs were bound with crossed bands, between
which his calf muscles swelled.

This time she was not afraid of the old man. He seemed to be a
friend and consoler in her unhappiness. He looked at her with pity,
as if he wished to give her courage. Then she thought that the
mighty warrior had once had his day, when he had overthrown
hundreds of enemies there on the heath and waded through the
streams of blood that had poured between the clumps. What had he
thought of one dead man more or less? How much would the sight of
children, whose fathers he had killed, have moved his heart of
stone? Light as air would the burden of a child's death have rested
on his conscience.

And she heard his whisper, the same which the old stone-cold
heathenism had whispered through all time. "Why repent? The gods
rule us. The fates spin the threads of life. Why shall the children
of earth mourn because they have done what the immortal gods have
forced them to do?"

Then Jofrid took courage and said to herself: "How am I to blame
because the child died? It is God alone who decides. Nothing takes
place without his will." And she thought that she could lay the
ghost by putting all repentance from her.

But now the door opened and Toenne came out to her. "Jofrid," he
said, "it is in the house now. It came up and knocked on the edge
of the bed and woke me. What shall we do, Jofrid?"

"The child is dead," said Jofrid. "You know that it is lying deep
under ground. All this is only dreams and imagination." She spoke
hardly and coldly, for she feared that Toenne would do something
reckl