BIARTEY (as all three cower suddenly)
   Succour upon this terrible journeying. 
  We have a message for a man in the West,
  Sent by an old man sitting in the East. 
  We are spent, our feet are moving wounds, our bodies
  Dream of themselves and seem to trail behind us
  Because we went unfed down in the mountains. 
  Feed us and shelter us beneath your roof,
  And put us over the Markfleet, over the channels. 
  We are weak old women:  we are beseeching you.

                        GUNNAR
  You may bide here this night, but on the morrow
  You shall go over, for tramping shameless women
  Carry too many tales from stead to stead—­
  And sometimes heavier gear than breath and lies. 
  These women will tell the mistress all I grant you;
  Get to the fire until she shall return.

                        BIARTEY
  Thou art a merciful man and we shall thank thee.

(GUNNAR goes out again to the left.  The old women approach the young ones gradually.) Little ones, do not doubt us.  Could we hurt you?  Because we are ugly must we be bewitched?

                        STEINVOR
  Nay, but bewitch us.

                        BIARTEY
  Not in a litten house: 
  Not ere the hour when night turns on itself
  And shakes the silence:  not while ye wake together. 
  Sweet voice, tell us, was that verily Gunnar?

                        STEINVOR
  Arrh—­do not touch me, unclean flyer-by-night: 
  Have ye birds’ feet to match such bat-webbed fingers?

                        BIARTEY
  I am only a cowed curst woman who walks with death;
  I will crouch here.  Tell us, was it Gunnar?

                        ODDNY
  Yea, Gunnar surely.  Is he not big enough
  To fit the songs about him?

                        BIARTEY
                              He is a man. 
  Why will his manhood urge him to be dead? 
  We walk about the whole old land at night,
  We enter many dales and many halls: 
  And everywhere is talk of Gunnar’s greatness,
  His slayings and his fate outside the law. 
  The last ship has not gone:  why will he tarry?

                        ODDNY
  He chose a ship, but men who rode with him
  Say that his horse threw him upon the shore,
  His face toward the Lithe and his own fields;
  As he arose he trembled at what he gazed on
  (Although those men saw nothing pass or meet them)
  And said ...  What said he, girls?

                        ASTRID
                                   “Fair is the Lithe: 
  I never thought it was so far, so fair. 
  Its corn is white, its meadows green after mowing. 
  I will ride home again and never leave it.”