’Eric, brave son, when I was your age I too hoped, and my hopes are come to this at last; you are blind in your hopeful youth, Eric, and do not see that this king (for the king it certainly was) will crush us, and not the less surely because he is plainly not ungenerous, but rather a good, courteous knight.  Alas! poor old Gunnar, broken down now and ready to die, as your country is!  How often, in the olden time, thou used’st to say to thyself, as thou didst ride at the head of our glorious house, ‘this charge may finish this matter, this battle must.’  They passed away, those gallant fights, and still the foe pressed on, and hope, too, slowly ebbed away, as the boundaries of our land grew less and less:  behold this is the last wave but one or two, and then for a sad farewell to name and freedom.  Yet, surely the end of the world must come when we are swept off the face of the earth.  God waits long, they say, before He avenges his own.’

As he was speaking, Siur and Cissela came nearer to him, and Cissela, all traces of her late terror gone from her face now, raising her lips to his bended forehead, kissed him fondly, and said, with glowing face,

’Father, how can I help our people?  Do they want deaths?  I will die.  Do they want happiness?  I will live miserably through years and years, nor ever pray for death.’

Some hope or other seemed growing up in his heart, and showing through his face; and he spoke again, putting back the hair from off her face, and clasping it about with both his hands, while he stooped to kiss her.

’God remember your mother, Cissela!  Then it was no dream after all, but true perhaps, as indeed it seemed at the time; but it must come quickly, that woman’s deliverance, or not at all.  When was it that I heard that old tale, that sounded even then true to my ears? for we have not been punished for nought, my son; that is not God’s way.  It comes across my memory somehow, mingled in a wonderful manner with the purple of the pines on the hillside, with the fragrance of them borne from far towards me; for know, my children, that in times past, long, long past now, we did an evil deed, for our forefathers, who have been dead now, and forgiven so long ago, once mad with rage at some defeat from their enemies, fired a church, and burned therein many women who had fled thither for refuge; and from that time a curse cleaves to us.  Only they say, that at the last we may be saved from utter destruction by a woman; I know not.  God grant it may be so.’

Then she said, ’Father, brother, and you, Siur, come with me to the chapel; I wish you to witness me make an oath.’

Her face was pale, her lips were pale, her golden hair was pale; but not pale, it seemed, from any sinking of blood, but from gathering of intensest light from somewhere, her eyes perhaps, for they appeared to burn inwardly.