and you will fight me till
you are dead, or I am dead."

He rose slowly to his feet, his face grew a dark red and his eyes seemed
to go back under his brows in his anger. He said no word but stood there
steadily looking at me. I seemed to feel his question how much I knew,
and with one glance at Father Cefron's lifted claw-like hand, and one
glance at the white face of Elsa, who was my wife, I answered in a low
voice:

"I stood outside the door of Elsa, my wife, last night, after the moon
had risen, and I held the curtain, and I listened to the voices, and I
listened for a long time, and then I came away."

There was a sudden tearing of cloth, and a flutter behind me, and
looking I saw Elsa, who was my wife, fall through the doorway which led
from the banqueting-hall. Then young Heinrick turned the broadness of
his back to me and stood a moment his right hand to his chin. Then he
came to his place at the board again and sat down and began to eat; but
as he raised the first mouthful of meat to his lips, he nodded to me, as
to a horse-cleaner. I sat down and drank, for I would eat no more, while
Father Cefron wept the tears of a very old man in a corner, laughing
sometimes, and then raising his hand and seeming to curse us in
laughing. The men sat silent with their brows drawn down. Only there was
a smile on some of their faces when they looked at me--a heavy smile of
kindness.

As the shades grew shorter and we could hear the sound of the swish of
the brooms in the snow outside the door, Father Cefron regained his
senses, and rising, and tottering toward me, and grasping each shoulder
with a clutching hand, he tried to shake me, murmuring curses on the old
gods meanwhile and sending them all to Hell in Latin and Danish. Then he
began to blame me, and though he did not curse me as he had done the
gods, yet he so poured out words that I had need to stop my ears to get
away from their cold reasoning. Then he spoke for a long time on the
hereafter, and told me the stories of the saints, and then he cursed the
devil and his works, and then he prayed for me. Then rising, he
commanded us both by name, his hands raised in the air and his white
sleeves falling back from his bony forearms, to leave this holmgang or
else we were cursed. He sank upon his knees and prayed to us, and then
the shadow from a tall, gaunt tree that I was watching from the window
touched its foot, and lifting my sword I turned to where young Heinrick