“Strike not, son of kings! the stars forbear their own: the maiden thou shalt not slay; yet shalt thou reign over the race of Oestrich; and thou shall give Orna as a bride to the favorite of the stars. Arise, and go thy way!” The voice ceased: the terror of Orna had overpowered for a time the springs of life; and Siror bore her home through the wood in his strong arms. “Alas!” said Morven, when, at the next day, he again met the aspiring prince; “alas! the stars have ordained me a lot which my heart desires not; for I, lonely of life, and crippled of shape, am insensible to the fires of love; and ever, as thou and thy tribe know, I have shunned the eyes of women, for the maidens laughed at my halting step and my sullen features; and so in my youth I learned betimes to banish all thoughts of love. But since they told me (as they declared to _thee_), that only through that marriage, thou, O beloved prince! canst obtain thy fatter’s plumed crown, I yield me to their will.” “But,” said the prince, “not until I am king can I give thee my sister in marriage; for thou knowest that my sire would smite me to the dust, if I asked him to give the flower of our race to the son of the herdsman Osslah.” “Thou speakest the words of truth. Go home and fear not: but, when thou art king, the sacrifice must be made, and Orna mine. Alas! how can I dare to lift my eyes to her! But so ordain the dread kings of the night!--Who shall gainsay their word?” “The day that sees me king, sees Orna thine,” answered the prince. Morven walked forth, as was his wont, alone; and he said to himself, “the king is old, yet may he live long between me and mine hope!” and he began to cast in his mind how he might shorten the time. Thus absorbed, he wandered on so unheedingly, that night advanced, and he had lost his path among the thick woods, and knew not how to regain his home; so he lay down quietly beneath a tree, and rested till day dawned. Then hunger came upon him and he searched among the bushes for such simple roots as those with which, for he was ever careless of food, he was used to appease the cravings of nature. He found, among other more familiar herbs and roots, a red berry of a sweetish taste, which he had never observed before. He ate of it sparingly, and had not proceeded far in the wood before he found his eyes swim, and a deadly sickness come over him. For several hours he lay convulsed on the ground expecting death; but the gaunt spareness of his frame, and his unvarying abstinence, prevailed over the poison, and he recovered slowly, and after great anguish: but he went with feeble steps back to the spot where the berries grew, and, plucking several, hid them in his bosom, and by nightfall regained the city.