nd she muttered
words of whose signification the other knew not, though she listened
intently, and gazed ever at her as closely as might be.

Then fell the Hall-Sun utterly silent, and the lids closed over her eyes,
and her hands were clenched, and her feet pressed hard on the daisies:
her bosom heaved with sore sighs, and great tear-drops oozed from under
her eyelids and fell on to her raiment and her feet and on to the flowery
summer grass; and at the last her mouth opened and she spake, but in a
voice that was marvellously changed from that she spake in before:

"Why went ye forth, O Wolfings, from the garth your fathers built,
And the House where sorrow dieth, and all unloosed is guilt?
Turn back, turn back, and behold it! lest your feet be over slow
When your shields are heavy-burdened with the arrows of the foe;
How ye totter, how ye stumble on the rough and corpse-strewn way!
And lo, how the eve is eating the afternoon of day!
O why are ye abiding till the sun is sunk in night
And the forest trees are ruddy with the battle-kindled light?
O rest not yet, ye Wolfings, lest void be your resting-place,
And into lands that ye know not the Wolf must turn his face,
And ye wander and ye wander till the land in the ocean cease,
And your battle bring no safety and your labour no increase."

Then was she silent for a while, and her tears ceased to flow; but
presently her eyes opened once more, and she lifted up her voice and
cried aloud--

"I see, I see! O Godfolk behold it from aloof,
How the little flames steal flickering along the ridge of the Roof!
They are small and red 'gainst the heavens in the summer afternoon;
But when the day is dusking, white, high shall they wave to the moon.
Lo, the fire plays now on the windows like strips of scarlet cloth
Wind-waved! but look in the night-tide on the onset of its wrath,
How it wraps round the ancient timbers and hides the mighty roof
But lighteth little crannies, so lost and far aloof,
That no man yet of the kindred hath seen them ere to-night,
Since first the builder builded in loving and delight!"

Then again she stayed her speech with weeping and sobbing, but after a
while was still again, and then she spoke pointing toward the roof with
her right hand.

"I see the fire-raisers and iron-helmed they are,
Brown-faced about the banners that their hands have borne afar.
And who in the garth of