w!' quoth Wulf, at last. 'There is nothing
to be done in this accursed place but to eat. I get no fighting, no
hunting. I hate women as they hate me. I don't know anything indeed,
that I don't hate, except eating and singing. And now, what with those
girls' vile unmanly harps and flutes, no one cares to listen to a true
rattling warsong. There they are at it now, with their caterwauling,
squealing all together like a set of starlings on a foggy morning! We'll
have a song too, to drown the noise.' And he burst out with a wild rich
melody, acting, in uncouth gestures and a suppressed tone of voice, the
scene which the words described--

An elk looked out of the pine forest He snuffed up east, he snuffed down
west, Stealthy and still.

His mane and his horns were heavy with snow; I laid my arrow across my
bow, Stealthy and still.

And then quickening his voice, as his whole face blazed up into fierce
excitement--

The bow it rattled' the arrow flew, It smote his blade-bones through and
through, Hurrah!

I sprang at his throat like a wolf of the wood, And I warmed my hands in
the smoking blood, Hurrah!

And with a shout that echoed and rang from wall to wall, and pealed
away above the roofs, he leapt to his feet with a gesture and look of
savage frenzy which made Philammon recoil. But the passion was gone in
an instant, and Wulf sat down again chuckling to himself--

'There--that is something like a warrior's song. That makes the old
blood spin along again! But this debauching furnace of a climate! no man
can keep his muscle, or his courage, or his money, or anything else in
it. May the gods curse the day when first I saw it!'

Philammon said nothing, but sat utterly aghast at an outbreak so unlike
Wulf's usual caustic reserve and stately self-restraint, and shuddering
at the thought that it might be an instance of that daemoniac
possession to which these barbarians were supposed by Christians and by
Neo-Platonists to be peculiarly subject. But the horror was not yet at
its height; for in another minute the doors of the women's court flew
open, and, attracted by Wulf's shout, out poured the whole Bacchanalian
crew, with Orestes, crowned with flowers, and led by the Amal and
Pelagia, reeling in the midst, wine-cup in hand.

'There is my philosopher, my preserver, my patron saint!' hiccupped he.
'Bring him to my arms, that I may encircle his lovely neck with pearls
of India, and barbaric gold!'

'For God's sake l