er, and tell me when thou comest
back what thou hast seen of the coming of the wain-burg. For by this
time it should be drawing anigh."

So Ali went forth, and there was silence of words for a while in the
Hall; but there arose the sound of the wood-wrights busy with the wimble
and the hammer about the bier. No long space had gone by when Ali came
back into the hall panting with his swift running; and he cried out:

"O Hall-Sun, they are coming; the last wain hath crossed the ford, and
the first is hard at hand: bright are their banners in the sun."

Then said the Hall-Sun: "O warriors, it is fitting that we go to meet our
banners returning from the field, and that we do the Gods to wit what
deeds we have done; fitting is it also that Thiodolf our War-duke wend
with us. Now get ye into your ordered bands, and go we forth from the
fire-scorched hall, and out into the sunlight, that the very earth and
the heavens may look upon the face of our War-duke, and bear witness that
he hath played his part as a man."

Then without more words the folk began to stream out of the Hall, and
within the garth which the Romans had made they arrayed their companies.
But when they were all gone from the Hall save they who were on the dais,
the Hall-Sun took the waxen torch which she had litten and quenched at
the departure of the host to battle, and now she once more kindled it at
the flame of the wondrous Lamp, the Hall-Sun. But the wood-wrights
brought the bier which they had made of the spear-shafts of the kindred,
and they laid thereon a purple cloak gold-embroidered of the treasure of
the Wolfings, and thereon was Thiodolf laid.

Then those men took him up; to wit, Sorli the Old, and Wolfkettle and
Egil, all these were of the Wolfing House; Hiarandi of the Elkings also,
and Valtyr of the Laxings, Geirbald of the Shieldings, Agni of the
Daylings, Angantyr of the Bearings, Geirodd of the Beamings, Gunbald of
the Vallings: all these, with the two valiant wood-wrights, Steinulf and
Grani, laid hand to the bier.

So they bore it down from the dais, and out at the Man's-door into the
sunlight, and the Hall-Sun followed close after it, holding in her hand
the Candle of Returning. It was an hour after high-noon of a bright
midsummer day when she came out into the garth; and the smoke from the
fire-scorched hall yet hung about the trees of the wood-edge. She looked
neither down towards her feet nor on the right side or the left, but