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"O Wood-Sun," he said "thou art the treasure of life that I found when I was young, and the love of life that I hold, now that my beard is grizzling. Since when did I fear thee, Wood-Sun? Did I fear thee when first I saw thee, and we stood amidst the hazelled field, we twain living amongst the slain?
So, look you! here is a fair field hazelled by God; let us two use it to-day, and fight to the death here; and then if thou win me, smite off my head, and let my men fight it out afterwards, as best they may without me, and 'tis like they will be beaten then.
And then shalt thou have what thou wouldedst when amidst of the hazelled field Thou kissed'st the mouth of the helper, and the hand of the people's shield, Shalt thou have the thing that thou wouldedst when thou broughtest me to birth, And I, the soul of the Wolfings, began to look on earth? Wilt thou play the God, O mother, and make a man anew, A joyless thing and a fearful?
When they were out a-gates, they rode for two miles along the highway, heedlessly enough by seeming, and then, as Michael bade, turned suddenly into a deep and narrow lane, and forth on, as it led betwixt hazelled banks and coppices of small wood, skirting the side of the hills, so that it was late in the afternoon before they came into the Highway again, which was the only road leading into the passes of the mountains.
"It means beer, George," the ancient replied, "beer and froth, and nothing else." "Nothing else! I hope that is a true word, Saunders, that's all. I mislike the looks of some of those fellows." "Why, to judge from all the whispers we hear," the overlooker commented, "we are like enough to get our backs well hazelled before long."
It brought clouds, too; pale, swift, hurrying clouds, that blotted heaven and shed gloom upon the earth. He scrambled up among the hazelled rubbish heaps that surround the caldron of the quarry, and lay flat upon the stones.
A wind had sprung up out of the north-west; it was cruel keen, it dried him like a fire, and racked his finger-joints. It brought clouds, too; pale, swift, hurrying clouds, that blotted heaven and shed gloom upon the earth. He scrambled up among the hazelled rubbish-heaps that surround the cauldron of the quarry, and lay flat upon the stones.
But Thiodolf answered her: "I have deemed, and long have I deemed that this is my second life, That my first one waned with my wounding when thou cam'st to the ring of strife. For when in thine arms I wakened on the hazelled field of yore, Meseemed I had newly arisen to a world I knew no more, So much had all things brightened on that dewy dawn of day.
Now what became of the king's court, and the hazelled field of our champions, we wot not, or whether they be yet alive we cannot tell thee; but if they be alive, it is to them that we would have thee do our errand, and thereof will we tell thee closely to-morrow. And so, sweetling, an end of my tale.
There then they laid Thiodolf, and they wondered that no blood came from him, and that there was no sign of a shot-weapon in his body. But as for him, when he fell, all memory of the battle and what had gone before it faded from his mind, and he passed into sweet and pleasant dreams wherein he was a lad again in the days before he had fought with the three Hun-Kings in the hazelled field.
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