Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Ward of King Canute; a romance of the Danish conquest by Ottilie A. (Ottilia Adelina) Liljencrantz
page 48 of 308 (15%)
Pondering over everything;
He then grows tired,
And when morning comes
All is lament, as before.
Ha'vama'l.

Who that has youth and a healthy body is not made a new being by a night of
dreamless slumber? What young heart is so despairing that to waken into a fair
day does not bring courage? Wakened by the sun's caress, to the morning song
of blowing trees, Randalin faced her future as became the kinswoman of
warriors.

"I do not know why it was that fear crept into my breast last night," she told
herself severely, when the first wave of strangeness and grief had broken over
her, and she had come up again into the sparkling air. "Great dangers have
threatened me, but I have escaped them all with great luck; it is poor-
spirited of me to despair. And it must be that witches had thinned my blood
with water that I should have thought of running away. To do that would be to
lose my revenge forever. I should become a creature without honor, like the
girl with the necklace. To stay is no less than my duty. If I think all the
time of Fridtjof, it is certain that I can hide it that I am a girl." Turning
in her furry bed, she rose cautiously upon her elbow and looked about.

The tent was empty, though scattered furs along the benches showed where
sleepers might have rested. But from outside, a clatter of hurrying feet and
excited voices broke suddenly upon her. Did it mean a battle? She sat up,
straining eye and ear. The jubilant voices shouted greetings that just missed
being intelligible. The sun, glancing from moving weapons, flashed through the
doorway in fantastic shapes.

DigitalOcean Referral Badge