He said: “Why didst thou deem thus of me, O friend?”
She laughed and said: “Dost thou long to hear me say the words when thou knowest my thought well? So be it. I saw thee both young and fair; and I knew thee to be the son of a noble, worthy, guileless man and of a beauteous woman of great wits and good rede. And I found thee to be kind and openhanded and simple like thy father, and like thy mother wiser than thou thyself knew of thyself; and that thou wert desirous of deeds and fain of women.”
She was silent for a while, and he also: then he said: “Didst thou draw me to the woods and to thee?”
She reddened and said: “I am no spell-wife: but true it is that Wood-mother made a waxen image of thee, and thrust through the heart thereof the pin of my girdle-buckle, and stroked it every morning with an oak-bough over which she had sung spells. But dost thou not remember, Gold-mane, how that one day last Hay-month, as ye were resting in the meadows in the cool of the evening, there came to you a minstrel that played to you on the fiddle, and therewith sang a song that melted all your hearts, and that this song told of the Wildwood, and what was therein of desire and peril and beguiling and death, and love unto Death itself? Dost thou remember, friend?”
“Yea,” he said, “and how when the minstrel was done Stone-face fell to telling us more tales yet of the woodland, and the minstrel sang again and yet again, till his tales had entered into my very heart.”
“Yea,” she said, “and that minstrel was Wood-wont; and I sent him to sing to thee and thine, deeming that if thou didst hearken, thou would’st seek the woodland and happen upon us.”
He laughed and said: “Thou didst not doubt but that if we met, thou mightest do with me as thou wouldest?”
“So it is,” she said, “that I doubted it little.”
“Therein wert thou wise,” said Face-of-god; “but now that we are talking without guile to each other, mightest thou tell me wherefore it was that Folk-might made that onslaught upon me? For certain it is that he was minded to slay me.”
She said: “It was sooth what I told thee, that whiles he groweth so battle-eager that whatso edge-tool he beareth must needs come out of the scabbard; but there was more in it than that, which I could not tell thee erst. Two days before thy coming he had been down to Burgstead in the guise of an old carle such as thou sawest him with me in the marketplace. There was he guested in your Hall, and once more saw thee and the Bride together; and he saw the eyes of love wherewith she looked on thee (for so much he told me), and deemed that thou didst take her love but lightly. And he himself looked on her with such love (and this he told me not) that he deemed nought good enough for her, and would have had thee give thyself up wholly to her; for my brother is a generous man, my friend. So when I told him on the morn of that day whereon we met that we looked to see thee that eve (for indeed I am somewhat foreseeing), he said: ‘Look thou, Sun-beam, if he cometh, it is not unlike that I shall drive a spear through him.’ ‘Wherefore?’ said I; ‘can he serve our turn when he is dead?’ Said he: ‘I care little. Mine own turn will I serve. Thou sayest Wherefore
? I tell thee this stripling beguileth to her torment the fairest woman that is in the world—such an one as is meet to be the mother of chieftains, and to stand by warriors in their day of peril. I have seen her; and thus have I seen her.’ Then said I: ‘Greatly forsooth shalt thou pleasure her by slaying him!’ And he answered: ‘I shall pleasure myself. And one day she shall thank me, when she taketh my hand in hers and we go together to the Bride-bed.’ Therewith came over me a clear foresight of the hours to come, and I said to him: ‘Yea, Folk-might, cast the spear and draw the sword; but him thou shalt not slay: and thou shalt one day see him standing with us before the shafts of the Dusky Men.’ So I spake; but he looked fiercely at me, and departed and shunned me all that day, and by good hap I was hard at hand when thou drewest nigh our abode. Nay, Gold-mane, what would’st thou with thy sword? Why art thou so red and wrathful? Would’st thou fight with my brother because he loveth thy friend, thine old playmate, thy kinswoman, and thinketh pity of her sorrow?”
He said, with knit brow and gleaming eyes: “Would the man take her away from me perforce?”
“My friend,” she said, “thou art not yet so wise as not to be a fool at whiles. Is it not so that she herself hath
