resounded from a whizzing blow." Her face glowed bright with anger and the delicate blue veins were swollen on her forehead, while with a scornful look she turned her back to him. His blood was however aflame with desire for revenge. A second time had the young nobleman Soelver sought to satisfy his masculine passion, when he surprised Gro bathing upon Aebeloe. She however had defended her maidenhood and struck him about the head with an old, rusty sword, which she found on the shore, so that he sank upon the grass covered with blood. "He felt the pain of his wounds with a strange glow of pleasure. The blow had fallen upon the hard flint stone within him so that the sparks of passion had sprung forth. He loved the maiden Gro. A consuming passion raged in his blood. In his thoughts he knelt always before that ineffaceable image, which struck him to the earth with a flame of divine wrath in her eyes." In revenge for the trespass committed Sten Basse fell upon Soelver's castle and took the young nobleman himself prisoner. Wild violence of this sort was indeed familiar to Sten Basse. He himself had once taken his wife thus by force. Just as he was flattering himself that he had broken her will once for all, she bit him in his chin so that the blood gushed forth and she spit his own blood into his eyes. He was struck with admiration at such strength. He had thought to desert her at once. Now he lifted her in his arms, carried her from her father's castle into the stable, bound her to his horse and rode forth--to his own home. Their marriage had been at first a long series of repetitions of the first encounter. In the end she loved him as the horse loves the iron bit between his teeth and the spur in his flank. She did not allow herself to be subdued by the blows which he gave her, but she was the weaker and she loved him because he was strong enough to be the stronger. An evil fate had taken his sons from him one after the other. Therefore he wished to call forth in his only daughter the traits of his own blood, his pride, disdainfulness and stiff-neckedness. "She must know neither fear nor weakness; her will must be hardened and her courage steeled like that of a man. When he heard that his daughter had been in danger but had saved herself, he swore revenge to the perpetrator of the outrage, yet at the same time his heart laughed with pride at Gro's fearlessness. He took the young nobleman prisoner and rewarded him with heavy and tedious torture as penance for his insolence. Yet at the same time he delighted himself with the thought of putting his daughter to a still more dangerous proof. He wished to see the young-blooded, inexperienced birds reach out swinging and scratching in attack and defense."