of keeping down the increasing pride and power of the trading-towns.
At length Biorn laid his impious hand on the golden boar's head, and
swore to put to death without mercy every German trader whom fate, in
what way soever, might bring alive into his power. The gentle Verena
turned pale, and would have interposed--but it was too late, the
bloody word was uttered. And immediately afterwards, as though the
great enemy of souls were determined at once to secure with fresh
bonds the vassal thus devoted to him, a warder came into the hall to
announce that two citizens of a trading-town in Germany, an old man
and his son, had been shipwrecked on this coast, and were now within
the gates, asking hospitality of the lord of the castle. The knight
could not refrain from shuddering; but he thought himself bound by
his rash vow and by that accursed heathenish golden boar. We, his
retainers, were commanded to assemble in the castle-yard, armed with
sharp spears, which were to be hurled at the defenceless strangers at
the first signal made to us. For the first, and I trust the last
time in my life, I said 'No' to the commands of my lord; and that I
said in a loud voice, and with the heartiest determination. The
Almighty, who alone knows whom He will accept and whom He will
reject, armed me with resolution and strength. And Biorn might
perceive whence the refusal of his faithful old servant arose, and
that it was worthy of respect. He said to me, half in anger and half
in scorn: 'Go up to my wife's apartments; her attendants are running
to and fro, perhaps she is ill. Go up, Rolf the Good, I say to thee,
and so women shall be with women.' I thought to myself, 'Jeer on,
then;' and I went silently the way that he had pointed out to me.
On the stairs there met me two strange and right fearful beings, whom
I had never seen before; and I know not how they got into the castle.
One of them was a great tall man, frightfully pallid and thin; the
other was a dwarf-like man, with a most hideous countenance and