a man to fall."

She yet smiled as she said in answer:

"O Folk-wolf, heed and hearken; for when shall thy life be spent
And the Folk wherein thou dwellest with thy death be well content?
Whenso folk need the fire, do they hew the apple-tree,
And burn the Mother of Blossom and the fruit that is to be?
Or me wilt thou bid to thy grave-mound because thy battle-wrath
May nothing more be bridled than the whirl wind on his path?
So hearken and do my bidding, for the hauberk shalt thou bear
E'en when the other warriors cast off their battle-gear.
So come thou, come unwounded from the war-field of the south,
And sit with me in the beech-wood, and kiss me, eyes and mouth."

And she kissed him in very deed, and made much of him, and fawned on him,
and laid her hand on his breast, and he was soft and blithe with her, but
at last he laughed and said:

"God's Daughter, long hast thou lived, and many a matter seen,
And men full often grieving for the deed that might have been;
But here my heart thou wheedlest as a maid of tender years
When first in the arms of her darling the horn of war she hears.
Thou knowest the axe to be heavy, and the sword, how keen it is;
But that Doom of which thou hast spoken, wilt thou not tell of this,
God's Daughter, how it sheareth, and how it breaketh through
Each wall that the warrior buildeth, yea all deeds that he may do?
What might in the hammer's leavings, in the fire's thrall shall abide
To turn that Folks' o'erwhelmer from the fated warrior's side?"

Then she laughed in her turn, and loudly; but so sweetly that the sound
of her voice mingled with the first song of a newly awakened wood-thrush
sitting on a rowan twig on the edge of the Wood-lawn. But she said:

"Yea, I that am God's Daughter may tell thee never a whit
From what land cometh the hauberk nor what smith smithied it,
That thou shalt wear in the handplay from the first stroke to the
last;
But this thereof I tell thee, that it holdeth firm and fast
The life of the body it lappeth, if the gift of the Godfolk it be.
Lo this is the yoke-mate of doom, and the gift of me unto thee."

Then she leaned down from the stone whereon they sat, and her hand was in
the dewy grass for a little, and then it lifted up a dark grey rippling
coat of rings; and she straightened herself in the seat again, and laid
that hauberk on the knees of Thiodolf, and he put his ha