through and through, but no one was there. Finally
a secret passage was discovered, leading underground, and the king
entered it, the others following. They emerged in a forest where they
found Torborg and all her men and where a sharp battle began. No warrior
could have fought more bravely than the man-like princess, and her men
stood up for her boldly, but they gradually gave way before the onset of
Rolf and his tried warriors.

Rolf now bade Kettil to take Torborg prisoner, but not to wound her,
saying that it would be shameful to use arms against a woman. Kettil
sprang forward and gave the princess a sharp blow with the flat of his
sword, reviling her at the same time with rude words. In return, Torborg
gave him so hard a blow on the ear with her battle-axe that he fell
prostrate, with his heels in the air.

"That is the way we treat our dogs when they bark too loud," she said.

Kettil sprang up, burning with anger, but at the same moment Rolf rushed
forward and grasped the warlike princess in his powerful arms, so that
she was forced to surrender.

He told her that she was his prisoner, but that he did not wish to win a
wife in the viking manner and that he would leave it to her father to
judge what should be done. Taken captive in his arms, there was nothing
else for her to do, and she went with him to Upsala, where King Erik was
delighted at Rolf's success. As for the warlike princess, she laid down
her arms at her father's feet, put on a woman's garments, and seemed glad
enough to have been won as a bride in so warlike a manner and by so
heroic a wooer.

Soon after this the marriage took place, the festivities being the
grandest the court could afford and lasting for fourteen days, after
which Rolf and his followers returned home, his new queen with him. The
sagas say, as we can well believe after so strenuous a wooing, that
afterwards King Rolf and Queen Torborg lived a long and happy life.

_RAGNAR LODBROK AND HIS WIVES AND SONS._

The old sagas, or hero tales of the north, are full of stories of
enchantment and strange marvels. We have told one of these tales in the
record of King Rolf and Princess Torborg. We have now to tell that of
Ragnar Lodbrok, a hero king of the early days, whose story is full of
magical incidents. That this king reigned and was a famous man in his
days there is no reason to doubt, but around his career gathered many
fables, as was apt to be the case with the legends of