Then went the Queen unto Hagen, and she looked on him, and she spake-- And all the hoarded hatred of years in her voice outbrake:-- "If thou restore me the treasure that thy robber hand hath ta'en, Peradventure thou mayest living see Burgundy-land again." Made answer the grim knight Hagen: "The word is wasted in air, O noble Daughter of Princes. A certain oath I sware To reveal the Hoard unto no man:--so long as liveth but one Of the Princes Three, my masters, it is rendered up unto none." {P. 324} "Of the oath will I make swift ending!" that high-born woman said. To her brother she sent her servants, and she bade them smite him dead. And they hewed his head from his body: she held it on high by the hair In sight of the Hero of Troneg. With grief beyond compare And with indignation of spirit he saw the head of his lord. Grimly he turned on Kriemhild, and spake his latest word: "Thou hast indeed made ending according to thy will. Even as I had foreseen it, so now doth fate fulfil. Dead now is the noble Gunther, the King of Burgundy, Young Giselher, Lord Gernot--yea, dead be the Princes Three. Now, now of the Hoard none knoweth save God and I alone-- Never, thou Child of the Devil, unto thee shall its place be known!" She answered: "An evil requital hast thou rendered into mine hand! This hold I at least in possession, Siegfried's battle-brand. He bare it, mine own, my belovèd, when I saw him for that last time, Ere thou, to my grief everlasting, wroughtest that foul crime!" She flashed it out of the scabbard--her hand he could not stay-- For now from the knight she purposed to rend the life away: On high in her hands she swung it, from his body his head did she smite; And King Etzel saw, and he deemed it an evil and bitter sight. "Woe's me!" cried the King in anguish; "how is he stricken down,-- Stricken by hands of a woman!--the hero of chiefest renown That ever in battle's forefront fighting his buckler bore! Were he never so much my foeman, mine heart is for him full sore!" Then Master Hildebrand shouted: "This thing shall profit her not That she dared to slay him! What cometh to me I care no jot!-- Yea, though he brought me also into mortal peril and pain, I will take in any wise vengeance for valiant Hagen slain!" In wrathful indignation on Kriemhild Hildebrand leapt, And the head of that Daughter of Princes from her shoulders his brand hath swept. {P. 325} With horror she saw him before her like the Spirit of Vengeance rise. What availed her shriek of anguish as the death-flame flashed in her eyes?