stole upon him, and he chose to follow the flight of his friends rather than to despise it.  I should think that he was filled with this alarm by the power of heaven, that he might not think himself courageous beyond the measure of human valour.  Thus the prosperity of mankind is wont ever to be incomplete.  Then all these warriors embraced the service of King Hakon, the mightiest of the rovers, like remnants of the war drifting to him.

After this Siwald was succeeded by his son Sigar, who had sons Siwald, Alf, and Alger, and a daughter Signe.  All excelled the rest in spirit and beauty, and devoted himself to the business of a rover.  Such a grace was shed on his hair, which had a wonderful dazzling glow, that his locks seemed to shine silvery.  At the same time Siward, the king of the Goths, is said to have had two sons, Wemund and Osten, and a daughter Alfhild, who showed almost from her cradle such faithfulness to modesty that she continually kept her face muffled in her robe, lest she should cause her beauty to provoke the passion of another.  Her father banished her into very close keeping, and gave her a viper and a snake to rear, wishing to defend her chastity by the protection of these reptiles when they came to grow up.  For it would have been hard to pry into her chamber when it was barred by so dangerous a bolt.  He also enacted that if any man tried to enter it, and failed, he must straightway yield his head to be taken off and impaled on a stake.  The terror which was thus attached to wantonness chastened the heated spirits of the young men.

Alf, the son of Sigar, thinking that peril of the attempt only made it nobler, declared himself a wooer, and went to subdue the beasts that kept watch beside the room of the maiden; inasmuch as, according to the decree, the embraces of the maiden were the prize of their subduer.  Alf covered his body with a blood-stained hide in order to make them more frantic against him.  Girt with this, as soon as he had entered the doors of the enclosure, he took a piece of red-hot steel in the tongs, and plunged it into the yawning throat of the viper, which he laid dead.  Then he flung his spear full into the gaping mouth of the snake as it wound and writhed forward, and destroyed it.  And when he demanded the gage which was attached to victory by the terms of the covenant, Siward answered that he would accept that man only for his daughter’s husband of whom she made a free and decided choice.  None but the girl’s mother was stiff against the wooer’s suit; and she privately spoke to her daughter in order to search her mind.  The daughter warmly praised her suitor for his valour; whereon the mother upbraided her sharply, that her chastity should be unstrung, and she be captivated by charming looks; and because, forgetting to judge his virtue, she cast the gaze of a wanton mind upon the flattering lures of beauty.  Thus Alfhild was led to despise the young Dane; whereupon she exchanged woman’s for man’s attire, and, no longer the most modest of maidens, began the life of a warlike rover.