and would effectually discover what they desired to know.  Feng was purposely to absent himself, pretending affairs of great import.  Amleth should be closeted alone with his mother in her chamber; but a man should first be commissioned to place himself in a concealed part of the room and listen heedfully to what they talked about.  For if the son had any wits at all he would not hesitate to speak out in the hearing of his mother, or fear to trust himself to the fidelity of her who bore him.  The speaker, loth to seem readier to devise than to carry out the plot, zealously proffered himself as the agent of the eavesdropping.  Feng rejoiced at the scheme, and departed on pretence of a long journey.  Now he who had given this counsel repaired privily to the room where Amleth was shut up with his mother, and lay flown skulking in the straw.  But Amleth had his antidote for the treachery.  Afraid of being overheard by some eavesdropper, he at first resorted to his usual imbecile ways, and crowed like a noisy cock, beating his arms together to mimic the flapping of wings.  Then he mounted the straw and began to swing his body and jump again and again, wishing to try if aught lurked there in hiding.  Feeling a lump beneath his feet, he drove his sword into the spot, and impaled him who lay hid.  Then he dragged him from his concealment and slew him.  Then, cutting his body into morsels, he seethed it in boiling water, and flung it through the mouth of an open sewer for the swine to eat, bestrewing the stinking mire with his hapless limbs.  Having in this wise eluded the snare, he went back to the room.  Then his mother set up a great wailing, and began to lament her son’s folly to his face; but he said:  “Most infamous of women; dost thou seek with such lying lamentations to hide thy most heavy guilt?  Wantoning like a harlot, thou hast entered a wicked and abominable state of wedlock, embracing with incestuous bosom thy husband’s slayer, and wheedling with filthy lures of blandishment him who had slain the father of thy son.  This, forsooth, is the way that the mares couple with the vanquishers of their mates; for brute beasts are naturally incited to pair indiscriminately; and it would seem that thou, like them, hast clean forgot thy first husband.  As for me, not idly do I wear the mask of folly; for I doubt not that he who destroyed his brother will riot as ruthlessly in the blood of his kindred.  Therefore it is better to choose the garb of dulness than that of sense, and to borrow some protection from a show of utter frenzy.  Yet the passion to avenge my father still burns in my heart; but I am watching the chances, I await the fitting hour.  There is a place for all things; against so merciless and dark spirit must be used the deeper devices of the mind.  And thou, who hadst been better employed in lamenting thine own disgrace, know it is superfluity to bewail my witlessness; thou shouldst weep for the blemish in thine own mind, not for that in another’s.  On the rest see thou keep silence.”  With such reproaches he rent the heart of his mother and redeemed her to walk in the ways of virtue; teaching her to set the fires of the past above the seductions of the present.