and he shall go home again; but if
_one_ thing only refuse to weep, then let Helheim hold its own; he
shall _not_ go."

"Every one will weep willingly," said Hermod, as he mounted Sleipnir
and rode towards the entrance of the city. Baldur went with him as far
as the gate and began to send messages to all his friends in Asgard,
but Hermod would not listen to many of them.

"You will soon come back to us," he said, "there is no use in sending
messages."

So Hermod darted homewards, and Baldur watched him through the bars of
Helheim's gateway as he flew along.

"Not soon, not soon," said the dead Asa; but still he saw the light
far off, and thought of what was to come.

V

WEEPING

"Well, Hermod, what did she say?" asked the gods from the top of the
hill as they saw him coming; "make haste and tell us what she said."
And Hermod came up.

"Oh! is that all?" they cried, as soon as he had delivered his
message. "Nothing can be more easy," and then they all hurried off to
tell Frigga. She was weeping already, and in five minutes there was
not a tearless eye in Asgard.

"But this is not enough," said Odin; "the whole earth must know of our
grief that it may weep with us."

Then the father of the gods called to him his messenger maidens--the
beautiful Valkyries--and sent them out into all worlds with these
three words on their lips, "Baldur is dead!" But the words were so
dreadful that at first the messenger maidens could only whisper them
in low tones as they went along, "Baldur is dead!" The dull, sad
sounds flowed back on Asgard like a new river of grief, and it seemed
to the gods as if they now wept for the first time--"Baldur is dead!"

"What is that the Valkyries are saying?" asked the men and women in
all the country round, and when they heard rightly, men left their
labor and lay down to weep--women dropped the buckets they were
carrying to the well, and, leaning their faces over them, filled them
with tears. The children crowded upon the doorsteps, or sat down at
the corners of the streets, crying as if their own mothers were dead.

The Valkyries passed on. "Baldur is dead!" they said to the empty
fields; and straightway the grass and the wild field-flowers shed
tears.

"Baldur is dead!" said the messenger maidens to the rocks and stones;
and the very stones began to weep. "Baldur is dead!" the Valkyries
cried; and even the old mammoth's bones which had lain for centuries
under the hills, bur