And then I told him how things had gone after his fall.

“Kolgrim has fought, therefore, a matter of fifty trolls,” I said; “which is more than most folk can say for themselves.”

Whereat he growled from the doorway: 

“Maybe I was too much feared to know what I was doing.”

We laughed at him, but he would have it so; and then we ate and drank, and spoke of going to where we had left the horses, being none so sure that we should find them at all.

Now the sun drank up the mists, and they cleared suddenly; and when the last wreaths fled up the hillsides and passed, we saw that the horses yet fed quietly where we had left them, full half a mile away up the steep rise down which the stream came.

And it was strange to see what manner of place this was in daylight, for until the mist lifted we could not tell in the least, and it was confused to us.  Now all the hillsides glowed purple with heather in a great cup round us, and we were on a little rise in the midst of them whereon stood the dolmen, and the same hands doubtless that raised it had set up a wide circle of standing stones round about it, such as I have seen in the Orkneys.  It was not a place where one would choose to spend the night.

There was no sign of the wild folk anywhere outside the stone circle.  They had gone, and there seemed no cover for them anywhere, unless they dwelt in clefts and caves of the bare tors around us.  So we feared no longer lest there should be any ambush set for us, and went about to see what they had left.

There were the long line that had noosed me, the earthen drum with its dry skin head, the raw hide thongs we had been bound with, and the food and drink; and that was all save what weapons lay round the slain, and the bodies of the two good greyhounds.

“These are but men, and not trolls as one might well think,” I said, looking on those who lay before us.

One whom I had slain had a heavy gold torque round his neck, and twisted gold armlets, being the chief, as I think.  Kolgrim took these off and gave them to me, and then he went to the drum and dashed it on a stone and broke it, saying nothing.

“Let us be going,” I said.  “These folk will come back and see to their dead.”

But Kolgrim looked at the drumhead and took it, and then coiled the long line on his arm.

“Trust a sailor for never losing a chance of getting a new bit of rigging,” said Harek, laughing; for he seemed none the worse for the things of last night, which indeed began to seem ghostly and dreamlike to us all.  “But what good is the bit of skin?”

“Here be strange charms wrought into it,” Kolgrim said.  “It will make a sword scabbard that will avail somewhat against such like folk if ever we meet them again.”

Truly there were marks as of branded signs on the bit of skin, and so he kept it; and I hung the gold trophies in my belt, and Harek took some of the remains of our supper:  and so we went to the horses, seeing nothing of the wild men anywhere.