Then she went, leaving me alone.  I sat myself down by the murdered Steinar, and stared at him.  Could he be really dead, I wondered, or did he live on elsewhere?  My faith had taught me of a place called Valhalla where brave men went, but in that faith and its gods I believed no more.  This Valhalla was but a child’s tale, invented by a bloody-minded folk who loved slaughter.  Wherever Steinar and the others were, it was not in Valhalla.  Then, perhaps, they slept like the beasts do after these have been butchered.  Perhaps death was the end of all.  It might be so, and yet I did not believe it.  There were other gods besides Odin and his company, for what were those which we had found in the Wanderer’s tomb?  I longed to know.

Yes, I would go south, as the Wanderer went, and search for them.  Perhaps there in the South I should learn the secret truth—­and other things.

I grew weary of these thoughts of gods who could not be found, or who, if found, were but devils.  My mind went back to my childhood’s days, when Steinar and I played together on the meads, before any woman had come to wreck our lives.  I remembered how we used to play until we were weary, and how at nights I would tell him tales that I had learned or woven, until at length we sank to sleep, our arms about each other’s necks.  My heart grew full of sorrow that in the end broke from my eyes in tears.  Yes, I wept over Steinar, my brother Steinar, and kissed his cold and gory lips.

The evening gathered, the twilight grew, and, one by one, the stars sprang out in the quiet sky, till the moon appeared and gathered all their radiance to herself.  I heard the sound of a woman’s dress, and looked up, thinking to see Freydisa.  But this woman was not Freydisa; it was Iduna!  Yes, Iduna’s self!

I rose to my feet and stood still.  She also stood still, on the farther side of the stone of sacrifice whereon that which had been Steinar was stretched between us.  Then came a struggle of silence, in which she won at last.

“Have you come to save him?” I asked.  “If so, it is too late.  Woman, behold your work.”

She shook her beautiful head and answered, almost in a whisper: 

“Nay, Olaf, I am come to beg a boon of you:  that you will slay me, here and now.”

“Am I a butcher—­or a priest?” I muttered.

“Oh, slay me, slay me, Olaf!” she went on, throwing herself upon her knees before me, and rending open her blue robe that her young breast might take the sword.  “Thus, perchance, I, who love life, may pay some of the price of sin, who, if I slew myself, would but multiply the debt, which in truth I dare not do.”

Still I shook my head, and once more she spoke: 

“Olaf, in this way or in that doubtless my end will find me, for, if you refuse this office, there are others of sterner stuff.  The knife that smote Steinar is not blunted.  Yet, before I die, who am come here but to die, I pray you hear the truth, that my memory may be somewhat less vile to you in the after years.  Olaf, you think me the falsest of the false, yet I am not altogether so.  Hark you now!  At the time that Steinar sought me, some madness took him.  So soon as we were alone together, his first words were:  ‘I am bewitched.  I love you.’