retched towards the rushing dancers. She screamed aloud, but she
was answered by loud laughter. She wished to stop, but a strong
grasp drew her on. She saw him snatch at those hurrying by, but
they were so quick that the heavy arms could not reach any of them.
It was incomprehensible to her that no one saw him. The agony of
death came over her. She thought that he would reach her. It was
for her that he had lain in wait for many years. With the others it
was only play. It was she whom he would seize at last.

Her turn came to rush by King Atle. She saw how he raised himself
and bent for a spring to be sure of the matter and catch her. In
her extreme need she felt that if she only could decide to give in
the next day, he would not have the power to catch her, but she
could not.--She came last, and she was swung so violently that she
was more dragged and jerked forward than running herself, and it
was hard for her to keep from falling. And although she passed at
lightning speed, the old warrior was too quick for her. The heavy
arms sank down over her, the stone hands seized her, she was drawn
into the silvery harness of that breast. The agony of death took
more and more hold of her, but she knew to the very last that it
was because she had not been able to conquer the stone king in her
own heart that Atle had power over her.

It was the end of the dancing and merriment. Jofrid lay dying. In
the violence of their mad rout, she had been thrown against the
king's cairn and received her death-blow on its stones.

THE OUTLAWS

A peasant who had murdered a monk took to the woods and was made an
outlaw. He found there before him in the wilderness another outlaw,
a fisherman from the outermost islands, who had been accused of
stealing a herring net. They joined together, lived in a cave, set
snares, sharpened darts, baked bread on a granite rock and guarded
one another's lives. The peasant never left the woods, but the
fisherman, who had not committed such an abominable crime,
sometimes loaded game on his shoulders and stole down among men.
There he got in exchange for black-cocks, for long-eared hares and
fine-limbed red deer, milk and butter, arrow-heads and clothes.
These helped the outlaws to sustain life.

The cave where they lived was dug in the side of a hill. Broad
stones and thorny sloe-bushes hid the entrance. Above it stood a
thick growing pine-tree. At its roots was the vent-hole of the
cave. The rising s