The girl was sitting up, and seeming not to heed Bertric at
all--for he was behind her and supporting her--was looking at us
two with wide eyes of fear and wonder. And when I turned of a
sudden, she set her hands together and held them out toward me as
if she prayed, and cried to me:
"Asa Thor! Asa Thor! will you leave me? Is there no place in
Freya's hall--in Gladsheim--for a maiden, if to Asgard she may not
come?"
I had no answer. For the moment I thought that she saw some vision
of the Asir beyond my ken, and then knew that it was indeed to
myself that she spoke. For I stood at the door of the house of the
dead, with Thor's weapon--the hammer--in my hand, and she wandered
in her mind with the weakness that comes after a swoon.
"Hush, lady, hush," said Bertric in a wonderfully gentle voice. "It
is not Thor whom you see, but only a friend."
But seeing that I made no answer, nor moved, for I was at a loss
altogether, she turned to Dalfin, who still knelt beside me,
watching her in blank amaze. The Norse gods were all but unknown to
him, save perhaps as he had heard their names now and then from the
Irish Danes.
"You must be Freyr, you other of the greeters of the slain. Speak
for me, I pray you, to the hammer bearer, that I may go whither my
grandfather is gone, if so be that I am dead.
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