Truly, the worships of the Mystery wandered as did men, and between filchings and borrowings the gods had as vagabond a time of it as did we.  As the Sumerians took the loan of Shamashnapishtin from us, so did the Sons of Shem take him from the Sumerians and call him Noah.

Why, I smile me to-day, Darrell Standing, in Murderers’ Row, in that I was found guilty and awarded death by twelve jurymen staunch and true.  Twelve has ever been a magic number of the Mystery.  Nor did it originate with the twelve tribes of Israel.  Star-gazers before them had placed the twelve signs of the Zodiac in the sky.  And I remember me, when I was of the Assir, and of the Vanir, that Odin sat in judgment over men in the court of the twelve gods, and that their names were Thor, Baldur, Niord, Frey, Tyr, Bregi, Heimdal, Hoder, Vidar, Ull, Forseti, and Loki.

Even our Valkyries were stolen from us and made into angels, and the wings of the Valkyries’ horses became attached to the shoulders of the angels.  And our Helheim of that day of ice and frost has become the hell of to-day, which is so hot an abode that the blood boils in one’s veins, while with us, in our Helheim, the place was so cold as to freeze the marrow inside the bones.  And the very sky, that we dreamed enduring, eternal, has drifted and veered, so that we find to-day the scorpion in the place where of old we knew the goat, and the archer in the place of the crab.

Worships and worships!  Ever the pursuit of the Mystery!  I remember the lame god of the Greeks, the master-smith.  But their vulcan was the Germanic Wieland, the master-smith captured and hamstrung lame of a leg by Nidung, the kind of the Nids.  But before that he was our master-smith, our forger and hammerer, whom we named Il-marinen.  And him we begat of our fancy, giving him the bearded sun-god for father, and nursing him by the stars of the bear.  For, he, Vulcan, or Wieland, or Il-marinen, was born under the pine tree, from the hair of the wolf, and was called also the bear-father ere ever the Germans and Greeks purloined and worshipped him.  In that day we called ourselves the Sons of the Bear and the Sons of the Wolf, and the bear and the wolf were our totems.  That was before our drift south on which we joined with the Sons of the Tree-Grove and taught them our totems and tales.

Yes, and who was Kashyapa, who was Pururavas, but our lame master-smith, our iron-worker, carried by us in our drifts and re-named and worshipped by the south-dwellers and the east-dwellers, the Sons of the Pole and of the Fire Drill and Fire Socket.

But the tale is too long, though I should like to tell of the three-leaved Herb of Life by which Sigmund made Sinfioti alive again.  For this is the very soma-plant of India, the holy grail of King Arthur, the—­but enough! enough!

And yet, as I calmly consider it all, I conclude that the greatest thing in life, in all lives, to me and to all men, has been woman, is woman, and will be woman so long as the stars drift in the sky and the heavens flux eternal change.  Greater than our toil and endeavour, the play of invention and fancy, battle and star-gazing and mystery—­greatest of all has been woman.