eers,
and shall make them wiser than they are to-day."

Then laughed Toti, as one who would not be thought to be too heedful of
the morrow. But Wolfkettle brake out into speech and rhyme, and said:

"O warriors, the Wolfing kindred shall live or it shall die;
And alive it shall be as the oak-tree when the summer storm goes by;
But dead it shall be as its bole, that they hew for the corner-post
Of some fair and mighty folk-hall, and the roof of a war-fain host."

So therewith they rode their ways past the abode of the Daylings.

Straight to the wood went all the host, and so into it by a wide way
cleft through the thicket, and in some thirty minutes they came thereby
into a great wood-lawn cleared amidst of it by the work of men's hands.
There already was much of the host gathered, sitting or standing in a
great ring round about a space bare of men, where amidmost rose a great
mound raised by men's hands and wrought into steps to be the
sitting-places of the chosen elders and chief men of the kindred; and
atop the mound was flat and smooth save for a turf bench or seat that
went athwart it whereon ten men might sit.

All the wains save the banner-wains had been left behind at the Dayling
abode, nor was any beast there save the holy beasts who drew the banner-
wains and twenty white horses, that stood wreathed about with flowers
within the ring of warriors, and these were for the burnt offering to be
given to the Gods for a happy day of battle. Even the war-horses of the
host they must leave in the wood without the wood-lawn, and all men were
afoot who were there.

For this was the Thing-stead of the Upper-mark, and the holiest place of
the Markmen, and no beast, either neat, sheep, or horse might pasture
there, but was straightway slain and burned if he wandered there; nor
might any man eat therein save at the holy feasts when offerings were
made to the Gods.

So the Wolfings took their place there in the ring of men with the
Elkings on their right hand and the Beamings on their left. And in the
midst of the Wolfing array stood Thiodolf clad in the dwarf-wrought
hauberk: but his head was bare; for he had sworn over the Cup of Renown
that he would fight unhelmed throughout all that trouble, and would bear
no shield in any battle thereof however fierce the onset might be.

Short, and curling close to his head was his black hair, a little
grizzled, so that it looked like rings of hard dark iron: his f