be punished
at once."

He had started up, and now, from the upper step, he held his long dark
mantle protectingly over the head of the threatened man. The tumult
instantly subsided: the most hot-headed retreated into the circle in
confusion.

"I ask you," the judge now began, "King Ebarbold, son--"

"Spare your words. Count of the Linzgau," interrupted the other, with a
gloomy, but fearless glance. "It is all true. Kill me: you have the
power to do so, therefore you have the right. I do not wish to live!
Had that been my desire, believe me, I might have fled into my own
district or to the Roman camp long before you deprived me, by your men,
of the royal insignia of my race or watched my every step, while you
merely disarmed the insignificant fisherman. True, according to the new
law of the league, you might have had me bound--me, the son of many
kings, the descendant of a god! Since I have learned the disloyalty of
my most faithful follower, my own old shield-bearer, I feel a loathing
for the times. I no longer wish to live among a people, according to a
law, which permits the horrible thing to happen that the native of a
district values its King, the follower his lord, less than the empty
sound of the word 'league,' the brief authority of a Duke from another
district. I am too old and too proud to learn this new law. You, old
man, with your greed for power, long ago, in your bloody thoughts,
dedicated me to your savage Odin."

"Not I, you yourself, son of Ebor."

"Well then--slay me."

"Not I. You yourself have separated yourself from your people by such
doctrines. Yes, it is better for such men as you to die than to live:
the district kings, if they offer defiance, must be sacrificed to Odin,
who, as King of the people, is above all our gods and all our peoples."

"My family," said the King proudly, "runs back through a hundred
ancestors to the gods: not to that crafty one, whose secret wiles you
are imitating, who scatters runes of discord among peoples and princes.
We descend from the god of peace. Fro, who bestows fertility. He has
set his golden-bristled boar for a sign upon the shields and helmets of
us, his sons. I have ever honored him and peace above all."

"Aha, the god Fro," replied the old Duke, now incensed, for he could
ill brook hearing his Odin upbraided, "the god Fro will have little
cause to rejoice, when he looks down on his descendant dangling from
the withered yew, like the long-billed s