the
lake. Wherever my granddaughter went, to pick berries in summer, to
comb the flax, to glean, to mow, to thresh--everywhere the jeering
couplet greeted her. That was not kind. Or wise!" she added in a lower
tone.

"Mother Waldrun, you are right: it was not well done, but no harm was
meant."

"Yes, yes, Odin placed the song in your reckless lips and gave you the
winged words, the biting jest. You cannot help it! Wherever you see a
tempting mark, the arrow of a mocking speech whizzes from your mouth."

"But unvenomed, unbarbed. A blunt little shaft like that with which we
strike the pretty red-breast, Donar's favorite, not to harm it, nay,
only to capture it unhurt and bear it home to our hearths that it may
sing sweetly to us year after year."

"Beware! Everything that has the red hue is passionate, swift to
revenge, and slow to forgive.

"Yes," replied the youth laughing. "How runs another verse?

"'Dost vex little Red Hair?
I bid thee beware!
The fair one fear.
She's false and spits her ire
Like the fox and the fire.'"

Scarcely was the last line uttered when, high among the topmost boughs
of the lofty tree, a strange sound was heard. At the very summit the
noise resembled spitting and rattling, while below it was different,
like something sliding down the trunk. The first sounds undoubtedly
came from a little squirrel, which, startled by some disturbance,
chattering and hissing in fear or anger, sprang in a wide curve yet
with a sure leap from the topmost bough of the tree to a neighboring
oak which stood at a considerable distance.

CHAPTER V.

Adalo's glance followed the little creature's bound, which really
resembled flying.

But meanwhile, from amid the dense foliage in the centre of the tree a
figure clad in the dress of a girl slid nimbly down the trunk, and as
soon as she reached the ground, smoothed her garments carefully from
her knees to her ankles. With her dainty, sparkling beauty, her almost
childlike delicacy of form, this apparition looked less like a mortal
maiden than a spirit of light.

She wore no cloak. Her white linen robe, with its cherry-red border and
girdle of the same hue a hand's breadth wide, left her neck and arms
bare; her complexion, wherever any portion of her almost too slenderly
moulded figure was visible, gleamed with the dazzling whiteness of
ivory; the unusually heavy d