A shore of dull green and yellow sand dunes, beyond whose low tops
a few sea-worn pines and birch trees show their heads, and at whose
feet the gray sea hardly breaks in the heavy stillness that comes
with the near thunder of high summer. The tide is full and nearing
the turn, and the shore birds have gone elsewhere till their food
is bared again at its falling. Only a few dotterels, whose eggs lie
somewhere near, run and flit, piping, to and fro, for a boat and
two men are resting at the very edge of the wave as if the ebb
would see them afloat again.

Armed men they are, too, and the boat is new and handsome, graceful
with the beautiful lines of a northern shipwright's designing. She
has mast and sail and one steering oar, but neither rowlocks nor
other oars to fit in them. One of the men is pacing quietly up and
down the sand, as if on the quarterdeck of a ship, and the other
rests against the boat's gunwale.

"Nigh time," says one, glancing at the fringe of weed which the
tide is beginning to leave.

"Ay, nigh, and I would it were past and over. It is a hard doom."

"No harder than is deserved. The doom ring and the great stone had
been the end in days which I can remember. That was the old Danish
way."

The other man nods.