at flew screaming about the top of the tree on which she sat: the
birds hopped close up to her on the twigs with pert curiosity; but
when the glance of her eye fell upon them, it was a signal for their
flight. But they could not understand her--nor, indeed, could she
understand herself.

When the evening twilight came on, and the sun was sinking, the time
of her transformation roused her to fresh activity. She glided down
from the tree, and as the last sunbeam vanished she stood in the
wrinkled form of the frog, with the torn webbed skin on her hands; but
her eyes now gleamed with a splendour of beauty that had scarcely been
theirs when she wore her garb of loveliness, for they were a pair of
pure, pious, maidenly eyes that shone out of the frog-face. They bore
witness of depth of feeling, of the gentle human heart; and the
beauteous eyes overflowed in tears, weeping precious drops that
lightened the heart.

On the sepulchral mound she had raised there yet lay the cross of
boughs, the last work of him who slept beneath. Helga lifted up the
cross, in pursuance of a sudden thought that came upon her. She
planted it upon the burial mound, over the priest and the dead horse.
The sorrowful remembrance of him called fresh tears into her eyes; and
in this tender frame of mind she marked the same sign in the sand
around the grave; and as she wrote the sign with both her hands, the
webbed skin fell from them like a torn glove; and when she washed her
hands in the woodland spring, and gazed in wonder at their snowy
whiteness, she again made the holy sign in the air between herself and
the dead man; then her lips trembled, the holy name that had been
preached to her during the ride from the forest came to her mouth, and
she pronounced it audibly.

Then the frog-skin fell from her, and she was once more the beauteous
maiden. But her head sank wearily, her tired limbs required rest, and
she fell into a deep slumber.

Her sleep, however, was short. Towards midnight she awoke. Before her
stood the dead horse, beaming and full of life, which gleamed forth
from his eyes and from his wounded neck; close beside the creature
stood the murdered Christian priest, "more beautiful than Bulder," the
Viking woman would have said; and yet he seemed to stand in a flame of
fire.

Such gravity, such an air of justice, such a piercing look shone out
of his great mild eyes, that their glance seemed to penetrate every
corner of her heart. Beauti