queenly Goddess, heard
the sound of her weeping, and came out of Asgard to comfort her.

"Ah, what comfort can you give me, Frigga?" cried Freya. "What comfort
can you give me when Odur will never be found by one who searches for
him?"

"Behold how your daughter, the child Hnossa, has grown," said Frigga.
Freya looked up and saw a beautiful maiden standing on Bifroest, the
Rainbow Bridge. She was young, more youthful than any of the Vanir or
the Asyniur, and her face and her form were so lovely that all hearts
became melted when they looked upon her.

And Freya was comforted in her loss. She followed Frigga across Bifroest,
the Rainbow Bridge, and came once again into the City of the Gods. In
her own palace in Asgard Freya dwelt with Hnossa, her child.

Still she wore round her neck Brisingamen, the necklace that lost her
Odur. But now she wore it, not for its splendor, but as a sign of the
wrong she had done. She weeps, and her tears become golden drops as they
fall on the earth. And by poets who know her story she is called The
Beautiful Lady in Tears.

[Illustration]

HOW FREY WON GERDA, THE GIANT MAIDEN, AND HOW HE LOST HIS MAGIC SWORD

Frey, chief of the Vanir, longed to have sight of his sister who had
been from Asgard for so long. (You must know that this happened during
the time when Freya was wandering through the world, seeking her
husband, the lost Odur.) Now there was in Asgard a place from which one
could overlook the world and have a glimpse of all who wandered there.
That place was Hlidskjalf, Odin's lofty Watch-Tower.

High up into the blue of the air that Tower went. Frey came to it and he
knew that Odin All-Father was not upon Hlidskjalf. Only the two wolves,
Geri and Freki, that crouched beside Odin's seat at the banquet, were
there, and they stood in the way of Frey's entrance to the Tower. But
Frey spoke to Geri and Freki in the language of the Gods, and Odin's
wolves had to let him pass.

But, as he went up the steps within the Tower, Frey, chief of the Vanir,
knew that he was doing a fateful thing. For none of the High Gods, not
even Thor, the Defender of Asgard, nor Baldur, the Best-Beloved of the
Gods, had ever climbed to the top of that Tower and seated themselves
upon the All-Father's seat. "But if I could see my sister once I should
be contented," said Frey to himself, "and no harm can come to me if I
look out on the world."

He came to the top of Hlidskjalf. He seated him