d looked thoughtful. Then she
said aloud:

"I cannot guess it; for of course he would take me with him. We could
not live apart."

She rose with a slight sigh, and went to a field near the house, to
look after the linen which was lying there bleaching.

But now old Iffa rose from his seat behind the open window, where he
had heard all that had passed.

"This will not do," he cried, rubbing his head hard. "I never yet had
the heart to separate the children--for they were but children! I
always waited and waited; and now I think I have put it off a little
too long. Away with thee, young Adalgoth!"

He left the dwelling-house, and walked slowly to the smithy. He found
the boy working busily. With puffed-out cheeks, he blew into the fire
on the hearth, and held the already roughly-prepared arrow-points in
it, in order to make them red-hot and fit for the hammer. Then he took
them out with a pair of pincers, laid them on an anvil, and hammered
out neat points and hooks. Without pausing in his work, he nodded
silently to his grandfather, striking sturdily upon the anvil till the
sparks flew.

"Well," thought the old man, "just now, at least, he thinks of nothing
but arrows and iron."

But suddenly the young smith finished his work with a tremendous
stroke, threw away the hammer, passed his hand across his hot forehead,
and asked, turning sharply to the old man:

"Grandfather, where do men come from?"

"Jesus, Woden, and Maria!" exclaimed the old man, starting back. "Boy,
how comest thou to such thoughts?"

"The thoughts come to me, not I to them. I mean the first men--the very
first. That tall Hermegisel over there in Teriolis, who ran away from
the Arian church at Verona, and can read and write, says that the
Christian God made a man in a garden out of clay, and, while he slept,
took one of his ribs and made a woman. That is ridiculous; for out of
the longest rib that ever was, one could not make ever so small a
girl."

"Well, I don't believe it either," the old man thoughtfully confessed.
"It is difficult to imagine. And I remember that my father once said,
as he was sitting by the hearth, that the first men grew upon
trees. But old Hildebrand, who was his friend, although he was much
older--and who stopped here on his way back from an expedition against
the savage Bajuvars, and who was sitting near father, for it was early
in the year, and very rough and cold--_he_ said that it was all right
about the tre