nly with tears. Brage would not leave his
beautiful wife alone amid the dim shades that crowded the dreary valley,
and so youth and genius vanished out of Asgard forever.

Balder was the most god-like of all the gods, because he was the purest
and the best. Wherever he went his coming was like the coming of
sunshine, and all the beauty of summer was but the shining of his face.
When men's hearts were white like the light, and their lives clear as
the day, it was because Balder was looking down upon them with those
soft, clear eyes that were open windows to the soul of God. He had
always lived in such a glow of brightness that no darkness had ever
touched him; but one morning, after Idun and Brage had gone, Balder's
face was sad and troubled. He walked slowly from room to room in his
palace Breidablik, stainless as the sky when April showers have swept
across it because no impure thing had ever crossed the threshold, and
his eyes were heavy with sorrow. In the night terrible dreams had broken
his sleep, and made it a long torture. The air seemed to be full of
awful changes for him, and for all the gods. He knew in his soul that
the shadow of the last great day was sweeping on; as he looked out and
saw the worlds lying in light and beauty, the fields yellow with waving
grain, the deep fiords flashing back the sunbeams from their clear
depths, the verdure clothing the loftiest mountains, and knew that over
all this darkness and desolation would come, with silence of reapers and
birds, with fading of leaf and flower, a great sorrow fell on his heart.

Balder could bear the burden no longer. He went out, called all the gods
together, and told them the terrible dreams of the night. Every face was
heavy with care. The death of Balder would be like the going out of the
sun, and after a long, sad council the gods resolved to protect him from
harm by pledging all things to stand between him and any hurt. So Frigg,
his mother, went forth and made everything promise, on a solemn oath,
not to injure her son. Fire, iron, all kinds of metal, every sort of
stone, trees, earth, diseases, birds, beasts, snakes, as the anxious
mother went to them, solemnly pledged themselves that no harm should
come near Balder. Everything promised, and Frigg thought she had driven
away the cloud; but fate was stronger than her love, and one little
shrub had not sworn.

Odin was not satisfied even with these precautions, for whichever way he
looked the