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All things are ready as you commanded, my lord Olaf, and there remains but to say farewell, which you had best do quickly, for they plot your death yonder." "Freydisa," I answered, "I go, but perchance I shall return again. Meanwhile, all I have is yours, with this charge. Guard you yonder woman, and see her safe to her home, or wherever she would go, and to Steinar here give honourable burial."
Thora, my mother, would have stopped us she said she had heard from her father that such bears were very dangerous beasts but Ragnar only thrust her aside, while I kissed her and told her not to fret. Outside the hall I met Freydisa, a dark, quiet woman of middle age, one of the virgins of Odin, whom I loved and who loved me and, save one other, me only among men, for she had been my nurse.
"It is too late," answered the voice of Freydisa. "I sought to know of you, Olaf, and you alone, and now the spirit has left me." Then came another long silence, after which Freydisa sighed thrice and awoke. We went out of the temple, I bearing the lamp and she resting on my arm. Near the door I turned and looked back, and it seemed to me that the image of the god glared upon me wrathfully.
That night I, Olaf, by the help of Freydisa, the priestess of the god, won entrance to the dungeon where Steinar lay awaiting his doom. This was not easy to do.
Freydisa lifted the cloak, and there lay the Wanderer as he had been placed a thousand or more of years before our time, as perfect as he had been in the hour of his death, for the tannin from the new-felled tree in which he was buried had preserved him. Breathless with wonder, we bent down and examined him by the light of the lamps.
"Whither now, young Olaf?" she asked me. "Has Iduna come here that you run so fast?" "No," I answered, "but a white bear has." "Oh! then things are better than I thought, who feared lest it might be Iduna before her time. Still, you go on an ill errand, from which I think you will return sadly." "Why do you say that, Freydisa?" I asked.
Tell her, thanks be to the gods and to the skill of Freydisa, my nurse, I live who all thought must die, and that I trust to be strong and well for our marriage at the Spring feast which draws on. Say also that through all my sickness I have dreamed of none but her, as I trust that sometimes she may have dreamed of me."
And I am not married because another woman took the only man I wanted before I met him. That was my bad luck. Still, it taught me a great lesson, namely, how to wait and meanwhile to acquire understanding." "What understanding have you acquired, Freydisa? For instance, does it tell you that our gods of wood and stone are true gods which rule the world?
"I think because I am a little less of a fool than other women, Olaf. Also because it has not pleased me to marry, as it is held natural that all women should do if they have the chance." "Why are you wiser, and why have you not married, Freydisa?" "I am wiser because I have questioned things more than most, and to those who question answers come at last.
"I, your virgin, seek to know the fate of him who stands by the altar, one whom I love." For a while there was quiet; then the first voice spoke, still through the lips of Freydisa. Of this I was sure, for those of the statue remained immovable. It was what it had always been a thing of wood.
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