hideous frog form, trembling and pressing close to
her foster-mother, who took her on her lap and embraced her
affectionately, hideous though she was. The air resounded with the
blows of clubs and swords, and with the hissing of arrows, as if a
hailstorm were passing across it. The hour was come when earth and sky
were to burst, the stars to fall, and all things to be swallowed up in
Surtur's sea of fire; but she knew that there would be a new heaven
and a new earth, that the corn fields then would wave where now the
ocean rolled over the desolate tracts of sand, and that the
unutterable God would reign; and up to Him rose Bulder the gentle, the
affectionate, delivered from the kingdom of the dead; he came; the
Viking woman saw him, and recognized his countenance; it was that of
the captive Christian priest. "White Christian!" she cried aloud, and
with these words she pressed a kiss upon the forehead of the hideous
frog-child. Then the frog-skin fell off, and Helga stood revealed in
all her beauty, lovely and gentle as she had never appeared, and with
beaming eyes. She kissed her foster-mother's hands, blessed her for
all the care and affection lavished during the days of bitterness and
trial, for the thought she had awakened and cherished in her, for
naming the name, which she repeated, "White Christian;" and beauteous
Helga arose in the form of a mighty swan, and spread her white wings
with a rushing like the sound of a troop of birds of passage winging
their way through the air.

The Viking woman woke; and she heard the same noise without still
continuing. She knew it was the time for the storks to depart, and
that it must be those birds whose wings she heard. She wished to see
them once more, and to bid them farewell as they set forth on their
journey. Therefore she rose from her couch and stepped out upon the
threshold, and on the top of the gable she saw stork ranged behind
stork, and around the castle, over the high trees, flew bands of
storks wheeling in wide circles; but opposite the threshold where she
stood, by the well where Helga had often sat and alarmed her with her
wildness, sat two white swans gazing at her with intelligent eyes. And
she remembered her dream, which still filled her soul as if it were
reality. She thought of Helga in the shape of a swan, and of the
Christian priest; and suddenly she felt her heart rejoice within her.

[Illustration: THE DISGUISED PRINCESSES BID FAREWELL TO THE VIKING
W