arms on the gold-hung garlanded bier. There ended his dream, and he laughed aloud and said: ‘I am a fool! All this were good and sweet if I should see it myself; and forsooth that is how I am thinking of it, as if I still alive should see myself dead and famous!’ Then he turned a little and looked at the houses of the Thorp lying dark about the snowy ways under the starlit heavens of the winter morning: dark they were indeed and grey, save where here and there the half-burned Yule-fire reddened the windows of a hall, or where, as in one place, the candle of some early waker shone white in a chamber window. There was scarce a man astir, he deemed, and no sound reached him save the crowing of the cocks muffled by their houses, and a faint sound of beasts in the byres. Thus he stood a while, his thoughts wandering now, till presently he heard footsteps coming his way down the street and turned toward them, and lo it was the old man Stone-face. He had seen Gold-mane go out, and had risen and followed him that he might talk with him apart. Gold-mane greeted him kindly, though, sooth to say, he was but half content to see him; since he doubted, what was verily the case, that his foster-father would give him many words, counselling him to refrain from going to the wood, and this was loathsome to him; but he spake and said: ‘Meseems, father, that the eastern sky is brightening toward dawn.’ ‘Yea,’ quoth Stone-face. ‘It will be light in an hour,’ said Face-of-god. ‘Even so,’ said Stone-face. ‘And a fair day for the morrow of Yule,’ said the swain. ‘Yea,’ said Stone-face, ‘and what wilt thou do with the fair day? Wilt thou to the wood?’ ‘Maybe, father,’ said Gold-mane; ‘Hall-face and some of the swains are talking of elks up the fells which may be trapped in the drifts, and if they go a-hunting them, I may go in their company.’ ‘Ah, son,’ quoth Stone-face, ‘thou wilt look to see other kind of beasts than elks. Things may ye fall in with there who may not be impounded in the snow like to elks, but can go light-foot on the top of the soft drift from one place to another.’ Said Gold-mane: ‘Father, fear me not; I shall either refrain me from the wood, or if I go, I shall go to hunt the wood-deer with other hunters. But since thou hast come to me, tell me more about the wood, for thy tales thereof are fair.’