e. But first we tried to make
Harek drink of the strong ale. He was beginning to breathe heavily
now, and I thought he would come round presently. Whether he had
been hurt by the whirling of the dance or by the fall when they
cast him aside, I could not tell, and we could do no more for him.

"Sleep, master," said Kolgrim, when we had supped well; "I will
watch for a time."

And he would have it so, and I, seeing that he was refreshed, was
glad to lie down and sleep inside the dolmen, bidding him wake me
in two hours and rest in turn.

But he did not. It was daylight when I woke, and the first ray of
the sun came straight into the narrow doorway and woke me. And it
waked Harek also. Kolgrim sat yet in the door with his sword across
his knees.

"Ho, scald!" I said, "you have had a great sleep."

"Ay, and a bad dream also," he answered, "if dream it was."

For now he saw before us the burnt-out fire, and the slain, and the
strangely-trampled circle of the dance.

"No dream, therefore," he said. "Is it true that I was made to
dance round yon fire till I was nigh dead?"

"True enough. I danced also in turn," I said.

And then I told him how things had gone after his fall.

"Kolgrim has fought, therefore, a matter of fifty trolls," I said;
"which is more than most folk can say for themselves."

Whereat he growled from the doorway:

"Maybe I was too much feared to know what I was doing."

We laughed at him, but he would have it so; and then we ate and
drank, and spoke of going to where we had left the horses, being
none so sure that we should find them at all.

Now the sun drank up the mists, and they cleared suddenly; and when
the last wreaths fled up the hillsides and passed, we saw that the
horses yet fed quietly where we had left them, full half a mile
away up the steep rise down which the stream came.

And it was strange to see what manner of place this was in
daylight, for until the mist lifted we could not tell in the least,
and it was confused to us. Now all the hillsides glowed purple with
heather in a great cup round us, and we were on a little rise in
the midst of them whereon stood the dolmen, and the same hands
doubtless that raised it had set up a wide circle of standing
stones round about it, such as I have seen in the Orkneys. It was
not a place where one would choose to spend the night.

There was no sign of the wild folk anywhere outside the stone
circle. They had gone, and there seemed