t, how rich we shall come again?"

"Ye shall never come back," said Bera, "ye shall die by the inner sea."

"Yea, here or there," said Hogni, "my death no doubt shall be."

"O Hogni," she said, "forbear it, that snare of the Eastland wrong!
In the health and the wealth of the sunlight at home mayst thou tarry
for long:
For waking or sleeping I dreamed, and dreaming, the tokens I saw."

"Oft," he said, "in the hands of the house-wife comes the crock by its
fatal flaw:
An hundred earls shall slay me, or the fleeing night-thief's shaft,
The sickness that wasteth cities, or the unstrained summer draught:
Now as mighty shall be King Atli and the gathered Eastland force
As the fly in the wine desired, or the weary stumbling horse."

She said: "Wilt thou stay in the land, lest the noble faint and fail,
And the Gods have nought to tell of in the ending of the tale?
O King, save thou thine hand-maid, lest the bloom of Kings decay!"

He said: "Good yet were the earth, though all we should die in a day:
But so fares it with you, ye women: when your husband or brother shall
die,
Ye deem that the world shall perish, and the race of man go by."

"Sure then is thy death," she answered, "for I saw the Eastland flood
Break over the Burg of the Niblungs, and fill the hall with blood."

He said: "Shall we wade the meadows to the feast of Atli the King?
Then the blood-red blossoming sorrel about our legs shall cling."

Said Bera: "I saw thee coming with the face of other days;
But the flame was in thy raiment, and thy kingly cloak was ablaze."

"How else," said he, "O woman, wouldst thou have a Niblung stride,
Save in ruddy gold sun-lighted, through the house of Atli's pride?"

She said: "I beheld King Atli midst the place of sacrifice
And the holy grove of the Eastland in a king's most hallowed guise:
Then I looked, as with laughter triumphant he laid his gift in the
fire,
And lo, 'twas the heart of Hogni, and the heart of my desire;
But he turned and looked upon me as I sickened with fear and with love,
And I saw the guile of the greedy, and with speechless sleep I strove,
And had cried out curses against him, but my gaping throat was hushed,
Till the light of a deedless dawning o'er dream and terror rushed;
And there wert thou lying beside me, though but little joy it seem