ucted them to shower stones to batter the
Hellespontines, who used spells to harden their bodies against weapons.
Thus both companies slew one another and perished. Jarmerik lost both
feet and both hands, and his trunk was rolled among the dead. BRODER,
little fit for it, followed him as king.

The next king was SIWALD. His son SNIO took vigorously to roving in his
father's old age, and not only preserved the fortunes of his country,
but even restored them, lessened as they were, to their former estate.
Likewise, when he came to the sovereignty, he crushed the insolence
of the champions Eskil and Alkil, and by this conquest reunited to his
country Skaane, which had been severed from the general jurisdiction of
Denmark. At last he conceived a passion for the daughter of the King
of the Goths; it was returned, and he sent secret messengers to seek a
chance of meeting her. These men were intercepted by the father of the
damsel and hanged: thus paying dearly for their rash mission. Snio,
wishing to avenge their death, invaded Gothland. Its king met him with
his forces, and the aforesaid champions challenged him to send strong
men to fight. Snio laid down as condition of the duel, that each of the
two kings should either lose his own empire or gain that of the other,
according to the fortune of the champions, and that the kingdom of the
conquered should be staked as the prize of the victory. The result was
that the King of the Goths was beaten by reason of the ill-success of
his defenders, and had to quit his kingdom for the Danes. Snio, learning
that this king's daughter had been taken away at the instance of her
father to wed the King of the Swedes, sent a man clad in ragged attire,
who used to ask alms on the public roads, to try her mind. And while he
lay, as beggars do, by the threshold, he chanced to see the queen, and
whined in a weak voice, "Snio loves thee." She feigned not to have heard
the sound that stole on her ears, and neither looked nor stepped back,
but went on to the palace, then returned straightway, and said in a low
whisper, which scarcely reached his ears, "I love him who loves me"; and
having said this she walked away.

The beggar rejoiced that she had returned a word of love, and, as he sat
on the next day at the gate, when the queen came up, he said, briefly
as ever, "Wishes should have a tryst." Again she shrewdly caught his
cunning speech, and passed on, dissembling wholly. A little later
she pass