e timber of your house
ye have not lost its flesh and blood; the shell is gone, but the kernel
is saved: for thy folk are by this time in the wood with the Wolfing stay-
at-homes, and among these are many who may fight on occasion, so they are
safe as for this time: the Romans may not come at them to hurt them."

Said Arinbiorn: "Had ye time to learn all this, Otter, when ye fled so
fast before the Romans, that the father tarried not for the son, nor the
son for the father?"

He spoke in a loud voice so that many heard him, and some deemed it evil;
for anger and dissension between friends seemed abroad; but some were so
eager for battle, that the word of Arinbiorn seemed good to them, and
they laughed for pride and anger.

Then Otter answered meekly, for he was a wise man and a bold: "We fled
not, Arinbiorn, but as the sword fleeth, when it springeth up from the
iron helm to fall on the woollen coat. Are we not now of more avail to
you, O men of the Bearings, than our dead corpses would have been?"

Arinbiorn answered not, but his face waxed red, as if he were struggling
with a weight hard to lift: then said Otter:

"But when will Thiodolf and the main battle be with us?"

Arinbiorn answered calmly: "Maybe in a little hour from now, or somewhat
more."

Said Otter: "My rede is that we abide him here, and when we are all met
and well ordered together, fall on the Romans at once: for then shall we
be more than they; whereas now we are far fewer, and moreover we shall
have to set on them in their ground of vantage."

Arinbiorn answered nothing; but an old man of the Bearings, one
Thorbiorn, came up and spake:

"Warriors, here are we talking and taking counsel, though this is no
Hallowed Thing to bid us what we shall do, and what we shall forbear; and
to talk thus is less like warriors than old women wrangling over the why
and wherefore of a broken crock. Let the War-duke rule here, as is but
meet and right. Yet if I might speak and not break the peace of the
Goths, then would I say this, that it might be better for us to fall on
these Romans at once before they have cast up a dike about them, as Fox
telleth is their wont, and that even in an hour they may do much."

As he spake there was a murmur of assent about him, but Otter spake
sharply, for he was grieved.

"Thorbiorn, thou art old, and shouldest not be void of prudence. Now it
had been better for thee to have been in the wood to-day to order the
women