permitted her to utter a single word. At length she spoke--

"Great affliction have you brought on me, and henceforth must I weep
while I live. I know you have not done this with evil intentions, and
therefore I forgive you, though it were a trifle for me to crush the
whole house like an egg-shell over your heads."

"Alas!" cried she, "my husband, whom I love more than myself, there he
sits petrified for ever. Never again will he open his eyes! Three
hundred years lived I with my father on the island of Kunnan, happy in
the innocence of youth, as the fairest among the giant maidens. Mighty
heroes sued for my hand. The sea around that island is still filled with
the rocky fragments which they hurled against each other in their
combats. Andfind won the victory, and I plighted myself to him; but ere
I was married came the detestable Odin into the country, who overcame
my father, and drove us all from the island. My father and sisters fled
to the mountains, and since that time my eyes have beheld them no more.
Andfind and I saved ourselves on this island, where we for a long time
lived in peace and quiet, and thought it would never be interrupted.
Destiny, which no one escapes, had determined it otherwise. Oluf came
from Britain. They called him the Holy, and Andfind instantly found that
his voyage would be inauspicious to the giants. When he heard how Oluf's
ship rushed through the waves, he went down to the strand and blew the
sea against him with all his strength. The waves swelled up like
mountains, but Oluf was still more mighty than he. His ship flew
unchecked through the billows like an arrow from a bow. He steered
direct for our island. When the ship was so near that Andfind thought he
could reach it with his hands, he grasped at the fore-part with his
right hand, and was about to drag it down to the bottom, as he had often
done with other ships. Then Oluf, the terrible Oluf, stepped forward,
and, crossing his hands over each other, he cried with a loud voice--"

"'Stand there as a stone till the last day!' and in the same instant my
unhappy husband became a mass of rock. The ship went on unimpeded, and
ran direct against the mountain, which it cut through, separating from
it the little island which lies yonder."

"Ever since my happiness has been annihilated, and lonely and
melancholy have I passed my life. On Yule eve alone can petrified giants
receive back their life, for the space of seven hours, if one of t