me."

He drew his seax, and we went on. The poor beasts could never rise
again, and that was the only way. The thane knew, and rode round
the wood end, and we went with him. Then Erling lifted the wounded
man on his own horse, and walked beside him.

"You and I will ride in turn," said Werbode. "As I am mounted, I
will take first turn for a mile or two. It will be all the same in
the end."

Presently Erling came alongside me, leaving the housecarl to mind
his comrade. He held out a broken arrow to me.

"I said they were trolls," he remarked. "See, this is an elf shot."

And truly the arrow which he had drawn from one of the horses had
as well wrought a flint head as I have ever seen--lustrous black,
and covered with tiny chippings.

"It is a better made head than usual," I said; "but many a thrall
has naught but flint-headed arrows in his quiver as he tends the
swine in the forest. They are good enough against the forest
beasts."

Erling laughed. "Maybe. But they have slain ten of this party. I
have no mind to hear them whistling about my ears again."

"Again?" said I.

"Oh ay; they had a shot or two at me yonder. The arrows came from
nowhere and missed me, so it did not seem worth while to call you.
I could not see any one."

Now it seemed to me that I had found a cool and valiant man in this
Dane.

"I think that I should have wanted to take cover," I said. "These
are perilous folk to have to do with. I wonder what became of
them?"

"Gone into the mounds we saw," said he. "Betimes in our land men
have seen such mounds raised, as it were, on pillars at night, and
under them halls full of dancing trolls. But if the seer will go
near them, all is gone. And mostly thereafter he dies."

"Not many trolls could get under those mounds we saw," I said.
"See, there are more here; they are too small for dwellings."

There was indeed one of the heaps of earth close at hand to us, and
Werbode rode toward it to see that none of the wild men lurked in
its shelter. He reached it, and then his horse started and leaped
aside, almost falling; and through a rattle of falling stones my
comrade called to the steed to "hold up."

Whereon we supposed, of course, that he had been served as the
horses of the thane had been crippled, and Erling and I ran to him,
sword in hand, bidding the others go on. But when we came to the
side of Werbode, we found him staring into a pit which seemed to
have opened under the weight of h