terrified and overcome by some fearful irresistible power. At
length, with a trembling voice, he said these words: "Yes, yes, my
dear young lord, you are surely quite right; you are perfectly right
in everything which you may please to assert."

Then the lord of the castle laughed aloud, and said: "Why, thou
strange pilgrim, what is become of all thy wonderfully fine speeches
and warnings now? Has the boy all at once struck thee dumb and
powerless? Beware, thou prophet-messenger, beware!"

But the palmer cast a fearful look on Biorn, which seemed to quench
the light of his fiery eyes, and said solemnly, in a thundering
voice, "Between me and thee, old man, the case stands quite
otherwise. We have nothing to reproach each other with. And now
suffer me to sing a song to you on the lute." He stretched out his
hand, and took down from the wall a forgotten and half-strung lute,
which was hanging there; and, with surprising skill and rapidity,
having put it in a state fit for use, he struck some chords, and
raised this song to the low melancholy tones of the instrument:


"The flow'ret was mine own, mine own,
But I have lost its fragrance rare,
And knightly name and freedom fair,
Through sin, through sin alone.

The flow'ret was thine own, thine own,
Why cast away what thou didst win?
Thou knight no more, but slave of sin,
Thou'rt fearfully alone!"