For thirteen years after the death of Siegfried, Kriemhild remained a widow. At the end of that period a knightly messenger, Sir Rudeger of Bechelaren, came from Etzel, King of the Huns, requesting the fair sister of King Gunther to supply the place of his queen, "Dame Helca," lately deceased. Nursing silently the religion of sorrow, the widow at first refused steadfastly to give ear to any message of this description; Hagan also, with his dark far-seeing wisdom, gave his decided negative to the proposal, knowing well that, beneath the calm exterior of time-hallowed grief, the high-hearted queen, never forgetting by whose hand her dear lord had fallen, still nursed the sleepless appetite for revenge. The brothers of the king, however, his other counsellors, and Dame Uta, urged the acceptance of the proposal, with the hope thereby, no doubt, of compensating in some degree to the royal widow for the injury at whose infliction they had connived. But all this moved not Kriemhild; only the distinct pledge given by Rudeger that he would help her, when once the sharer of King Etzel's throne, to avenge herself of all her enemies, at length prevailed. She married a second husband mainly to acquire the means of avenging the death of the first. Under the protection of Margrave Rudeger therefore, and with bad omens only from the lowering brows of Sir Hagan, the widow of Siegfried takes her departure from Worms, and proceeding through Bavaria, and down the Danube--after being hospitably entertained by the good bishop Pilgrin of Passau--arrives at Vienna, where she receives a magnificent welcome from "the wide-ruling Etzel," and his host of motley courtiers, pranked with barbaric pomp and gold, that far outshone the brightest splendour of the Rhine. Polacks and Wallachians, Greeks and Russians, Thuringians and Danes, attend daily, and do knightly service in the court of the mighty King of the Huns. The marriage feast was held for seventeen days with all pomp and revelry; and after that the happy monarch set out with Kriemhild for his castle at Buda. There he dwelt "in proudest honour, feeling nor woe nor sorrow," for seven years, during which time Kriemhild bore him a son, but only one, whom the pious wife prevailed with her lord to have baptised after the Christian custom. Meanwhile, in her mind she secretly harboured the same deep-rooted determination of most unchristian revenge; and towards the dark Hagan delay only intensified her hatred. Accordingly, that she might find means of dealing back to him the blow which he had inflicted on her first husband, she prevailed on Etzel to invite her brothers, with their attendants, and especially Hagan, to come from the far Rhine, and partake the hospitality of the Huns in the East. This request, from motives partly of kindness, partly of curiosity, was at once responded to by all: only, as usual, the dark Hagan stands alone, and prophesies harm. He knew he had done a deed that could not