man is tall and
handsome, armed in the close-knit ring-mail shirt of the Dane, with
gemmed sword hilt and golden mountings to scabbard and dirk, and
his steel helm and iron-gray hair seem the same colour in the
shadowless light of the dull sky overhead. One would set his age at
about sixty years.

But the woman at his side is young and wonderfully lovely. She is
dressed in white and gold, and her hair is golden as the coiled
necklace and armlets she wears, and hangs in two long plaits far
below her knees, though it is looped in the golden girdle round her
waist. Fastened to the girdle hangs the sheath of a little dagger,
but there is no blade in it. She is plainly of high rank, and
unwedded. Now her fair face is set and hard, and it would almost
seem that despair was written on it.

After those two the other folk seem hardly worth a glance, though
they are richly dressed, and the men are as well armed as the jarl
their leader. Nor do they seem to have eyes for any but those two
at their head, and no word passes among them. Their faces also are
set and hard, as if they had somewhat heavy to see to, and would
fain carry it through to the end unflinching.

So they come to the edge of the sea, where the boat waits them, and
there halt; and the tall jarl faces the girl at his side, and
speaks to her in a dull voice, while the people slowly make a half
circle round them, listening.

"Now we have come to the end," he says, "and from henceforth this
land shall know you and the ways of you no more. There were other
dooms which men had thought more fitting for you, but they were
dooms of death. You shall not die at our hands. You are young, and
you have time to bethink you whither the ways you have trodden
shall lead you. If the sea spares you, begin life afresh. If it
spares you not, maybe it is well. No others shall be beguiled by
that fair face of yours. The Norns heed not the faces of men."

He pauses; but the girl stands silent, hand locked in hand, and
with no change of face. Nor does she look at her accuser, but gazes
steadily out to the still sea, which seems endless, for there is no
line between sea and sky in the hot haze. For all its exceeding
beauty, hers is an evil face to look on at this time. And the women
who gaze on her have no pity in their eyes, nor have the men.

Once again the great jarl speaks, and his words are cold and
measured.

"Also, I and our wisest hold that what you have tried to compass