he pale light of the daybreak falls
through the long windows. The candles gutter and go out, falling down
from the walls, from the burned-out spikes. We stumble over the table,
on, over the broken benches, and over the bodies.

It was a good fight, O king, when Lord Snore swept his hall! There is
now but little more to tell. We found a great figure standing idly by
the door when we came there; it was swinging a great axe in its hand,
with its head sunk on its chest, and it swayed when a man touched it,
and fell back limply into our arms.

As they carried him up the hall towards the great bench a white figure
ran past me.

Then the lights went out, the world heaved, and I fell down across the
table; for both my hands had been cut off upon its edge.

When next I saw the hall, having come back out of the long unreality
that had lasted so many days, the first snow of the winter lay on the
window-ledges and the great fire was blazing merrily. I remember how
strange it all looked. And there, walking up and down slowly, and
leaning on my lady who guided him, was the wreck of a great man who
grasped weakly for support at her robe. I went up to him and stood
silently. My lady touched me with her hand and whispered to me to speak
to him. Then said I to my lord with a strange softness in my throat: "I
hope my lord is better--after his sickness." And he answered, "Yes,
yes--yes, yes--yes, yes--" nodding his head, sillily. And then my lady led
him to the great bench, and, seating him, talked to him child-talk and
tended him gently.

That night, as I sat by my lady, silent, the boy who fed me having gone
away to the others, one rose, and thinking to please me I suppose,
brought me my harp out of an inner room.

I think we were all glad when my lord died at the last snow. Then my
lady used to go among the cottages of the villagers, tending those who
were sick, talking with the young girls, and comforting all who were in
any sorrow. The women used sometimes to cry when she spoke to them. And
in about three months after we buried my lord, when summer was come
again, and the sun had already begun to warp the timbers of the ship on
the beach, when the boys ran shouting in the shallows, died my lady
also, and we buried her by the side of my lord.

Then left I the castle; and men tell me that it is pulled down to build
more houses for the villagers, and that the old ship has mouldered away
on the beach and can no more be seen.