There he lay, biting his hands for sorrow, and for wrath against God and
Fate. There he lay while the sun in the heavens smote him, and he knew
it not; while the wind of the sunset stirred in his hair, and he stirred
not. He could not even shed one tear, for this was the sorest of all the
sorrows that he had known on the waves of the sea, or on land among the
wars of men.

The sun fell and the ways were darkened. Slowly the eastern sky grew
silver with the moon. A night-fowl's voice was heard from afar, it drew
nearer; then through the shadow of the pyre the black wings fluttered
into the light, and the carrion bird fixed its talons and its beak on
the Wanderer's neck. Then he moved at length, tossed up an arm, and
caught the bird of darkness by the neck, and broke it, and dashed it on
the ground. His sick heart was mad with the little sudden pain, and he
clutched for the knife in his girdle that he might slay himself, but
he was unarmed. At last he rose, muttering, and stood in the moonlight,
like a lion in some ruinous palace of forgotten kings. He was faint with
hunger and weak with long lamenting, as he stepped within his own doors.
There he paused on that high threshold of stone where once he had sat in
the disguise of a beggar, that very threshold whence, on another day, he
had shot the shafts of doom among the wooers of his wife and the wasters
of his home. But now his wife was dead: all his voyaging was ended here,
and all his wars were vain. In the white light the house of his kingship
was no more than the ghost of a home, dreadful, unfamiliar, empty
of warmth and love and light. The tables were fallen here and there
throughout the long hall; mouldering bones, from the funeral feast, and
shattered cups and dishes lay in one confusion; the ivory chairs were
broken, and on the walls the moonbeams glistened now and again from
points of steel and blades of bronze, though many swords were dark with
rust.