do not even want it, I will
speak in justification. I would tell ye a few things. In that far place
she had seen but few men, only woods and trees and natural things. The
man to whom she was betrothed not against her will--I will be fair--was
little more than these to her in that dreamy place. Slow and dull, he
had nothing to answer in her own-taught beauty. When we came, she did
love me, truly, but in her kindness, she would stay his wife. She had
Freya's soul. Her father's brother liked me. Thus things were when the
night came of our leaving.

"One more--I had never asked her to be not true to her betrothed, so, I
was dreaming, my soul drawn all one way.

"That night when I sang her the love-song--oh ye men of my house, have ye
never done wrong? Are ye sure that the souls within ye would stand firm
while they were pulled with mighty cables? Have ye never had an evil
thought? Have your spirits always been level within ye? Can ye never be
mad, and rock to the torment of it? Do ye understand?

"Well, the music went out of my harp, and tore me--Are ye stone walls,
that ye would not have shaken down like the leaves of trees? I could
have wailed like a child for its mother, or, like a hammer on beams,
crushed a man's head with my hand.

"Are ye more than are men? Have ye never done any ill? I say, I stood
there, dreaming, playing; my soul drew her to me; I stood there playing
the old love-song, in agony. Then there was a noise of voices, and we
went to the ship, and were many days coming home, being becalmed."

He stared straight before him--a wakening came into his face--he on a
sudden raised his hands in the air, and, the shaking fingers widespread,
called through the hall in a strange voice. "Oh great Gods, come!"

We sat silent in the lit hall, and the call died away into silence.

"Shame!" cried a woman's voice; "ye are not men!"

We stirred not even at this reproof from a woman.

"I will go!" cried the voice again, and one of the women who helped in
the cooking stood forward with her great ladle held like a sword.

"Ay, and leave the ladle for the men to manage!" cried a second, a
bare-armed, laughing woman, ranging herself by the other one, and
turning a saucy face on my lord.

"Will ye lend us your swords, stay-at-homes?" called a third from beside
the fire.

"We need not your help to shove the ship off the beach," said a young
girl, haughtily, as she swept forward to the others and looked up at my
lo