Desirée had translated the words for Caleb. She had told him the pictured man was Siegmund; who, pausing in his flight to a place of refuge, with the fainting Sieglinde whom he loved, beheld the Valkyr, Brunhilde, and was told by her that a hero’s death and a hero’s reward in Valhalla were in store for him. There in the Viking Paradise, waited the warrior-parent he had lost; there Wotan the All-Father would welcome him. The Valkyries were preparing his place. The heroes of olden days would be his boon companions. And Siegmund, the Luckless, heard with joy. But one question he asked the goddess:--Would Sieglinde, his fellow fugitive, join him in that abode of the blest? Brunhilde scoffingly replied that Valhalla was for heroes; not for mere women. Then, unflinchingly casting aside his every hope of Paradise, Siegmund kissed the senseless woman’s brow; and, again facing the goddess, made answer: “Greet for me Valhalla! Greet for me Wotan! Greet for me my father and all the heroes! To them, I’ll follow thee not! Where Sieglinde bides, there shall Siegmund stay.” Caleb at the time had been but mildly interested in the tale. The fact that Desirée could translate such queer-looking words was to him the most noteworthy feature of the whole affair. Now, with a whimsical comparison to his own case, the incident recurred to him. Was he not, like Siegmund, keeping watch and ward in the wilderness over the unconscious woman of his heart? Was not the Brunhilde of ambition standing there somewhere in the mystic star-shadows before him, pointing out all that might be his were he to renounce love? And was he not making reply as defiantly, if perhaps not in quite such highflown terms, as had that Dutch chap in the bearskin clothes? The idea tickled Conover’s torpid imagination; he dwelt upon it with some pride at his own powers of analogy. Then he fell to dreaming of his vast new happiness, of the golden vista that stretched before him and Desirée. And again a wonder, almost holy, filled his heart. The night voices ceased. Brunhilde, piqued at such unwonted obstinacy from one who had ever heretofore been her slave, had scuttled back to Valhalla in a fine fit of rage; leaving this latter day Siegmund and Sieglinde to their own foolish, self-chosen fate. The cold pressed in more and more cruelly as the night waned. It pierced at times through Caleb’s numbness. He had great ado to keep his teeth from chattering so loudly as to wake the exhausted girl on his breast. The stars grew dim. The dawn-wind breathed across the sky. A paleness crept over the eastern horizon of the fog-sea. The man’s heavy head nodded;--once--and again,--then hung still. * * * * *