offering her guests the foaming ale. There was not much room in the
cottage, but the fiddlers were untiring, and the dance went on with
life and spirit. It grew suffocatingly warm. The door was thrown
open, and all at once Jofrid saw that night had come and that the
moon had risen. Then she went to the door and looked out into the
white world of the moonlight.

A heavy dew had fallen. The whole heath was white, as the moon was
reflected in all the little drops, which had collected on every
twig. There Toenne and she would go to-morrow hand in hand to meet
the most terrible dishonor. For, however the meeting with the
peasant should turn out, whatever he might take or whatever he
might let them keep, dishonor would certainly be their lot. They,
who that evening possessed a good cottage and many friends,
to-morrow would be despised and detested by all, perhaps they would
also be robbed of everything they had earned, perhaps, too, be
dishonored slaves. She said to herself: "It is the way of death."
And now she could not understand how she would ever have the
strength to walk in it. It seemed to her as if she were of stone, a
heavy stone image like old King Atle. Although she was alive, she
felt as if she would not be able to lift her heavy stone limbs to
walk that way.

She turned her eyes towards the king's grave and distinctly saw the
old warrior sitting there. But now he was adorned as for a feast.
He no longer wore the gray, moss-grown stone attire, but white,
glittering silver. Now again he wore a crown of beams, as when she
first saw him, but this one was white. And white shone his
breastplate and armlets, shining white were sword, hilt, and
shield. He sat and watched her with silent indifference. The
unfathomable mystery which great stone faces wear had now sunk down
over him. There he sat dark and mighty, and Jofrid had a faint,
indistinct idea that he was an image of something which was in
herself and in all men, of something which was buried in far-away
centuries, covered by many stones, and still not dead. She saw him,
the old king, sitting deep in the human heart. Over its barren
field he spread his wide king's mantle. There pleasure danced,
there love of display flaunted. He was the great stone warrior who
saw famine and poverty pass by without his stone heart being moved.
"It is the will of the gods," he said. He was the strong man of
stone, who could bear unatoned-for sin without yielding. He always
said