The cottage was low and mean. It was made of turf and sticks, and thatched with rushes. The furniture was of the simplest. A broad, low bench back in one corner was covered by a tick or sack filled with straw. A goat’s skin was thrown over it. This served for a bed. A loom and distaff were on one side, with great bunches of yarn beside them. The seats were but crude settles of wood. A square table was drawn up near the fire which blazed genially in the centre of the room. The dog immediately stretched himself before it. From the roof were suspended the sides and hams of meat—the bucon or bacon of the Anglo-Saxon—and numerous bunches of herbs. The walls and rafters were blackened by the smoke which escaped through a cover in the roof. Through the doorway the maiden caught a glimpse of another room. These two were all that the cottage contained. The one they were in served as a bed-room, sitting-room, kitchen, and dining-room, all in one. Simple and homely as it was, there was an air of warmth and comfort in it that stole over her senses gratefully. Soon the supper smoked on the table, and Adiva pressed her hospitably to sit up, and to partake of it. Broiled eels, swine meat, honey and barley cakes, and the inevitable mead, constituted the repast. Adiva served the meat on spits, and each cut for himself slices with his own knife into trenchers of wood. The mead was drunk from horns which were filled from a tankard. The color came to the girl’s face as she ate and drank, and was warmed by the fire. There were no vessels filled with water for the fingers, nor napkins to dry them on, nor table-cloth on the table, such as were used in the halls of the nobles; but there was kindness and good-will, and a homely hospitality that made amends for what was lacking in accessories. Not a word would the dame allow them to say until hunger was appeased. Then she looked up and said: “Now, Denewulf, be thou the first to speak and tell how and where thou didst find the maiden. Then shall she tell what happened before.” “Well,” said Denewulf quaffing a huge draught of mead, “as I and the others were coming through the wold with our hounds, what should we hear but the sound of music. Wondering much, we wound not our horns but stopped to listen. It ceased, and the howling of wolves smote our ears. Beshrew me, if I thought not that the wiccas were holding a conclave in the forest. Again the music started, and the howls ceased. We wound our horns again for our own comfort, for we wotted not but that the Norns were weaving our fates—” “Out upon thee, Denewulf,” interrupted the dame. “Have done with thy heathenish talk, and tell thy tale more simply.” The Saxon laughed, drank again from his horn, and resumed: “Then heard we a cry for help. We ran forward with our hounds. May I be bewrayed, but there in a tree was this maiden, who was performing to a whole pack of wolves below. Scold an’ thou wilt, Adiva, but methought at first that it was Jamvid and her sons.”