he heathen. Aye, I have done it in days
long ago."

I spoke to Gerda then, telling her what the old father wished, and
she smiled at the thought.

"We have naught to do," she said, "and if it will give him pleasure
we may as well bide here."

So we sat down on the bank in the sun amid the quiet of the
woodland, and listened. The wood flowers carpeted the ground, and
Gerda plucked those that were in reach and played with them while
the father began his words. Presently he saw that Gerda was paying
no heed, and he bade me translate, hearing that she did not
understand. And by that time he spoke the old tongue of his youth,
and the Erse way of speaking was forgotten.

Then he told us things which every Christian child knows; but which
were new and wonderful and very good to hear, to us two. Soon Gerda
had forgotten the flowers, and was listening, and presently asking
questions as might a child who hears the sweetest tale ever told.
So still we were, and so soft the voice of the old man, that the
birds the hermits were wont to feed came close to us, and a robin
perched on the shoulder of the father, and he smiled at it.

"See," he said, "the breast of the little bird is red because it
had compassion on its Maker as He suffered, and would pluck the
cruel thorns away."

And so with all homely words and simple he taught us, and we were
fain to listen. Odin and the Asir seemed far off at that time and
in that place, and I half blamed myself for harkening.

"What of our Asir?" I said at last.

"Heroes of the old days," he said. "Heroes whom their sons have
worshipped; because a man must needs worship the greatest whom he
knows."

"And what has become of them?"

He shook his head. "They are in the hands of the true Allfather,"
he answered. "I cannot tell more than that. It is enough."

"I have heard it said," I went on, for here was somewhat which
troubled me, "that you Christians hold that we worship fiends--that
the Asir are such."

"That were to wrong the heroes of the past, my son," he answered.
"It is meant that you know not what you worship under those
honoured names. There are those among you who know that the Asir
were your forefathers. Did you ever hear that Alfred, the wise and
most Christian king of England, was ashamed of that ancestry of
his?"

"I myself cannot be ashamed thereof. I am from the line of Odin," I
said. "If you speak truth, father, one count against Christians has
passed, from my min