HALLGERD
  What are these women, Oddny?  Who let them in?

      BIARTEY (who spins through all that follows)
  Lady, the man of fame who is your man
  Gave us his peace to-night, and that of his house. 
  We are blown beggars tramping about the land,
  Denied a home for our evil and vagrant hearts;
  We sought this shelter when the first dew soaked us,
  And should have perished by the giant hound
  But Gunnar fought it with his eyes and saved us. 
  That is a strange hound, with a man’s mind in it.

      HALLGERD (seating herself in the high-seat)
  It is an Irish hound, from that strange soil
  Where men by day walk with unearthly eyes
  And cross the veils of the air, and are not men
  But fierce abstractions eating their own hearts
  Impatiently and seeing too much to be joyful. 
  If Gunnar welcomed ye, ye may remain.

                        BIARTEY
  She is a fair free lady, is she not? 
  But that was to be looked for in a high one
  Who counts among her fathers the bright Sigurd,
  The bane of Fafnir the Worm, the end of the god-kings;
  Among her mothers Brynhild, the lass of Odin,
  The maddener of swords, the night-clouds’ rider. 
  She has kept sweet that father’s lore of bird-speech,
  She wears that mother’s power to cheat a god. 
  Sisters, she does well to be proud.

JOFRID and GUDFINN
Ay, well.

    HALLGERD (shaping the tissue with her shears)

I need no witch to tell I am of rare seed,
Nor measure my pride nor praise it.  Do I not know? 
Old women, ye are welcomed:  sit with us,
And while we stitch tell us what gossip runs—­
But if strife might be warmed by spreading it.

                      BIARTEY

Lady, we are hungered; we were lost
All night among the mountains of the East;
Clouds of the cliffs come down my eyes again. 
I pray you let some thrall bring us to food.

                        HALLGERD
  Ye get nought here.  The supper is long over;
  The women shall not let ye know the food-house,
  Or ye’ll be thieving in the night.  Ye are idle,
  Ye suck a man’s house bare and seek another. 
  ’Tis bed-time; get to sleep—­that stills much hunger.

                        BIARTEY
  Now it is easy to be seeing what spoils you. 
  You were not grasping or ought but over warm
  When Sigmund, Gunnar’s kinsman, guested here. 
  You followed him, you were too kind with him,
  You lavished Gunnar’s treasure and gear on him
  To draw him on, and did not call that thieving. 
  Ay, Sigmund took your feuds on him and died
  As Gunnar shall.  Men have much harm by you.

                      HALLGERD

Now have I gashed the golden cloth awry: 
’Tis ended—­a ruin of clouts—­the worth of the gift—­
Bridal dish-clouts—­nay, a bundle of flame
I’ll burn it to a breath of its old queen’s ashes: 
Fire, O fire, drink up.