So he said:  “Give me the point and edges that I know, that I may smite myself therewith and not the foemen; for I have feared and blenched from the battle.”

Said an old warrior:  “If that be so, Thiodolf, wilt thou blench twice?  Is not once enough?  Now let us go back to the hard handplay, and if thou wilt, smite thyself after the battle, when we have once more had a man’s help of thee.”

Therewith he held out Throng-plough to him by the point, and Thiodolf took hold of the hilts and handled it and said:  “Let us hasten, while the Gods will have it so, and while they are still suffering me to strike a stroke for the kindred.”

And therewith he brandished Throng-plough, and went forth toward the battle, and the heart grew hot within him, and the joy of waking life came back to him, the joy which but erewhile he had given to a mere dream.

But the old man who had rebuked him stooped down and lifted the Hauberk from the ground, and cried out after him, “O Thiodolf, and wilt thou go naked into so strong a fight? and thou with this so goodly sword-rampart?”

Thiodolf stayed a moment, and even therewith they looked, and lo! the Romans giving back before the Goths and the Goths following up the chase, but slowly and steadily.  Then Thiodolf heeded nothing save the battle, but ran forward hastily, and those warriors followed him, the old man last of all holding the Hauberk in his hand, and muttering: 

“So fares hot blood to the glooming and the world beneath the grass; And the fruit of the Wolfings’ orchard in a flash from the world must pass.  Men say that the tree shall blossom in the garden of the folk, And the new twig thrust him forward from the place where the old one broke, And all be well as aforetime:  but old and old I grow, And I doubt me if such another the folk to come shall know.”

And he still hurried forward as fast as his old body might go, so that he might wrap the safeguard of the Hauberk round Thiodolf’s body.

CHAPTER XXIV—­THE GOTHS ARE OVERTHROWN BY THE ROMANS

Now rose up a mighty shout when Thiodolf came back to the battle of the kindreds, for many thought he had been slain; and they gathered round about him, and cried out to him joyously out of their hearts of good-fellowship, and the old man who had rebuked Thiodolf, and who was Jorund of the Wolfings, came up to him and reached out to him the Hauberk, and he did it on scarce heeding; for all his heart and soul was turned toward the battle of the Romans and what they were a-doing; and he saw that they were falling back in good order, as men out-numbered, but undismayed.  So he gathered all his men together and ordered them afresh; for they were somewhat disarrayed with the fray and the chase:  and now he no longer ordered them in the wedge array, but in a line here three deep, here five deep, or more, for the foes were hard at