mound, but at a higher level than the entrance.  For the passage sloped upwards, doubtless to allow for drainage.  The huge stones with which it was lined and roofed over, were not less than ten feet high and set on end side by side.  One of these upright stones was that designed for the door.  Had it been in place, we could not have entered the chamber without great labour and the help of many men; but, as it chanced, either it had never been set up after the burial, or this was done so hastily that it had fallen.

“We are in luck’s way,” said Freydisa, when she noticed this.  “No, I will go first, who know more of ghosts than you do, Olaf.  If the Wanderer strikes, let him strike me,” and she clambered over the fallen slab.

Presently she called back, saying: 

“Come; all is quiet here, as it should be in such a place.”

I followed her, and sliding down the end of the stone—­which I remember scratched my elbow and made it bleed—­found myself in a little room about twelve feet square.  In this place there was but one thing to be seen:  what appeared to be the trunk of a great oak tree, some nine feet in length, and, standing on it, side by side, two figures of bronze under a foot in height.

“The coffin in which the Wanderer lies and the gods he worshipped,” said Freydisa.

Then she took up first one and next the other of the bronze figures and we examined them in the light of the lamps, although I feared to touch them.  They were statues of a man and a woman.

The man, who wore a long and formal beard, was wrapped in what seemed to be a shroud, through an opening in which appeared his hands.  In the right hand was a scourge with a handle, and in the left a crook such as a shepherd might use, only shorter.  On his head was what I took to be a helmet, a tall peaked cap ending in a knob, having on either side of it a stiff feather of bronze, and in front, above the forehead, a snake, also of bronze.

The woman was clad in a straight and narrow robe, cut low beneath her breast.  Her face was mild and beautiful, and in her right hand she held a looped sceptre.  Her hair descended in many long plaits on to her shoulders.  For head-dress she wore two horns, supporting between them a burnished disc of gold like to that of the moon when it is full.

“Strange gods!” I muttered.

“Aye,” answered Freydisa, “yet maybe true ones to those who worship them.  But we will talk of these later; now for their servant.”

Then she dropped the figures into a pouch at her side, and began to examine the trunk of the oak tree, of which the outer sap wood had been turned to tinder by age, leaving the heart still hard as iron.

“See,” she said, pointing to a line about four inches from the top, “the tree has been sawn in two length-ways and the lid laid on.  Come, help.”