asants arranged a bier. They wished to carry the
peasant's body down to his house. They had respect for the dead and
spoke softly in his presence. When they lifted him up on the bier,
Tord rose, shook the hair back from his face, and said with a voice
which shook with sobs,--

"Say to Unn, who made Berg Rese a murderer, that he was killed by
Tord the fisherman, whose father is a wrecker and whose mother is a
witch, because he taught him that the foundation of the world is
justice."

THE LEGEND OF REOR

There was a man called Reor. He was from Fuglekarr in the parish of
Svarteborg, and was considered the best shot in the county. He was
baptized when King Olof rooted out the old belief, and was ever
afterwards an eager Christian. He was freeborn, but poor; handsome,
but not tall; strong, but gentle. He tamed young horses with but a
look and a word, and could lure birds to him with a call. He dwelt
mostly in the woods, and nature had great power over him. The
growing of the plants and the budding of the trees, the play of the
hares in the forest's open places and the fish's leap in the calm
lake at evening, the conflict of the seasons and the changes of the
weather, these were the chief events in his life. Sorrow and joy he
found in such things and not in that which happened among men.

One day the skilful hunter met deep in the thickest forest an old
bear and killed him with a single shot. The great arrow's sharp
point pierced the mighty heart, and he fell dead at the hunter's
feet. It was summer, and the bear's pelt was neither close nor
even, still the archer drew it off, rolled it together into a hard
bundle, and went on with the bear-skin on his back.

He had not wandered far before he perceived an extraordinarily
strong smell of honey. It came from the little flowering plants
that covered the ground. They grew on slender stalks, had light-green,
shiny leaves, which were beautifully veined, and at the top a
little spike, thickly set with white flowers. Their petals were of
the tiniest, but from among them pushed up a little brush of
stamens, whose pollen-filled heads trembled on white filaments.
Reor thought, as he went among them, that those flowers, which
stood alone and unnoticed in the darkness of the forest, were
sending out message after message, summons upon summons. The
strong, sweet fragrance of the honey was their cry; it spread the
knowledge of their existence far away among the trees and high up