“Comrade,” I cried in gladness, “I thought you were slain.”

“The good helm saved me,” he answered; “but I came round in time.  What are these whom we have fought?”

I suppose the fury kept him up so far, for now I saw that his face was ashy pale, and his knees shook under him.

“Are you badly hurt?” I asked.

“My head swims yet—­that is all.  Where is the scald?”

I turned to him and pointed.  Kolgrim sat down beside him and bent over him, leaning against the stone of the great dolmen.

“I do not think he is dead, master,” he said.  “Let us draw him inside this house, and then he will be safe till daylight—­unless the trolls come back and we cannot hold this doorway till the sun rises.”

“They are men, not trolls,” I said, pointing to the slain who lay between us and the fire in a lane where Kolgrim had charged through them, “else had we not slain them thus.”

“One knows not what Sigurd’s sword will not bite,” he said.

“Why, most of that is your doing,” I said, laughing a little.

But he looked puzzled, and shook his head.

“I mind leaping among them, but not that I slew any.”

Now I thought that he would be the better for food.  There had been plenty of both food and drink going among these wild people, whatever they were, and they had not waited to take anything.  So I said I would walk round the fire and see what I could find, and went before he could stay me.

I had not far to go either, for there were plentiful remains of a roasted sheep or two set aside with the skins, and alongside them a pot of heather ale; so that we had a good meal, sitting in the door of the dolmen, while the moon rose.  But first we tried to make Harek drink of the strong ale.  He was beginning to breathe heavily now, and I thought he would come round presently.  Whether he had been hurt by the whirling of the dance or by the fall when they cast him aside, I could not tell, and we could do no more for him.

“Sleep, master,” said Kolgrim, when we had supped well; “I will watch for a time.”

And he would have it so, and I, seeing that he was refreshed, was glad to lie down and sleep inside the dolmen, bidding him wake me in two hours and rest in turn.

But he did not.  It was daylight when I woke, and the first ray of the sun came straight into the narrow doorway and woke me.  And it waked Harek also.  Kolgrim sat yet in the door with his sword across his knees.

“Ho, scald!” I said, “you have had a great sleep.”

“Ay, and a bad dream also,” he answered, “if dream it was.”

For now he saw before us the burnt-out fire, and the slain, and the strangely-trampled circle of the dance.

“No dream, therefore,” he said.  “Is it true that I was made to dance round yon fire till I was nigh dead?”

“True enough.  I danced also in turn,” I said.