to get up out of my bed. I can
remember them carrying me back there, and I can remember them saying,
"He has gone mad with the fever." Then I think that in the night I did
go mad with the fever, for they told me afterwards that I howled and
yelled and screamed for my sword to fight the gnomes and hobgoblins, and
the things of hell and air; but, as I say, this I only learned long
afterwards. I strove with death hard-handed, and I held him in my grasp,
and he could not throw me; and at last the wrestle came to an end, for
he slipped from me and disappeared, and I lay on the bed with wide-open
eyes, my white face making the rough men who were in the room use words
of which they were ashamed after, to me. Then came my wife, and her hand
pulled the last of the fever from me; but the wrestle had left me very
tired, and I lay many days knowing little. At last I could sit in the
great chair by the window on sunny days, and look forth over the snows
that covered my uplands and count the familiar trees which stuck up
black out of the snow-drifts. Then they wrapped me in many coats, and
with a man on each side of me I came down into the hall again, my wife
behind me. It was the time of noonday meat, and the men rose with a
hoarse shout as they saw me and pressed forward with outspread hands;
but my Lady Elsa was before them in a moment, and her green robe shone
strangely against their skin-clad bodies. She stopped them with gentle,
firm words, asking them to let me get to the great chair that I might
sit down, for I was come to eat a bite with them and drink a sup of ale;
and the men sat down with a sigh, such as dogs give of contentment after
full feeding. So I sat me down, and they brought me a tiny bird on a
little plate and I could only eat half of it. Then they brought me a
great tankard of ale, and I raised it to my lips and drank the half of
it, and I felt the manhood rush to my feet, and then to my head again,
and through my arms as I put the mug back on the table, and the men
nodded to one another as saying, "It is well done for a sick man." Then
slowly I finished the rest of the ale, then walked feebly to the fire
and stood there warming myself. Then the two men who stood by me led me
back to my chamber, and my wife followed, laying cool cloths on my
head. Now every day I walked feebly to my meat in the hall, but it was
not till the third day that I began to notice something strange about
the men. They would look at me wit