thought for his own good name than of her iniquity.  But the fair deeds of her brother did not make her obstinate and wonted hatred slacken a whit; she wore the spirit of her new husband with her design of slaying Frode and mastering the sovereignty of the Danes.  For whatsoever design the mind has resolutely conceived, it is slow to quit; nor is a sin that is long schemed swept away by the stream of years.  For the temper of later life follows the mind of childhood; nor do the traces easily fade of vices which have been stamped upon the character in the impressible age.  Finding the ears of her husband deaf, she diverted her treachery from her brother against her lord, hiring bravoes to cut his throat while he slept.  Scot was told about this by a waiting-woman, and retired to bed in his cuirass on the night on which he had heard the deed of murder was to be wrought upon him.  Ulfhild asked him why he had exchanged his wonted ways to wear the garb of steel; he rejoined that such was just then his fancy.  The agents of the treachery, when they imagined him in a deep sleep, burst in; but he slipped from his bed and cut them down.  The result was, that he prevented Ulfhild from weaving plots against her brother, and also left a warning to others to beware of treachery from their wives.

Meantime the design occurred to Frode of a campaign against Friesland; he was desirous to dazzle the eyes of the West with the glory he had won in conquering the East.  He put out to ocean, and his first contest was with Witthe, a rover of the Frisians; and in this battle he bade his crews patiently bear the first brunt of the enemy’s charge by merely opposing their shields, ordering that they should not use their missiles before they perceived that the shower of the enemy’s spears was utterly silent.  This the Frisians hurled as vehemently as the Danes received it impassively; for Witthe supposed that the long-suffering of Frode was due to a wish for peace.  High rose the blast of the trumpet, and loud whizzed the javelins everywhere, till at last the heedless Frisians had not a single lance remaining, and they were conquered, overwhelmed by the missiles of the Danes.  They fled hugging the shore, and were cut to pieces amid the circuitous windings of the canals.  Then Frode explored the Rhine in his fleet, and laid hands on the farthest parts of Germany.  Then he went back to the ocean, and attacked the Frisian fleet, which had struck on shoals; and thus he crowned shipwreck with slaughter.  Nor was he content with the destruction of so great an army of his foes, but assailed Britain, defeated its king, and attacked Melbrik, the Governor of the Scottish district.  Just as he was preparing to fight him, he heard from a scout that the King of the Britons was at hand, and could not look to his front and his rear both at once.  So he assembled the soldiers, and ordered that they should abandon their chariots, fling away all their goods, and scatter everywhere over the fields the gold which they had