die!"

His wife looked at him long and sorrowfully; then she said: "On your life and
soul be it, and on mine also, that your anger makes me tell what I would have
kept hidden. It is to-night that she comes. Now it remains for you to remember
your word once given to me!"

"Give it back to me!" he cried; "it is my fate to finish the quest of the
white doe."

"If I give it," said she, "your happiness goes with it, and mine, and that of
our children."

"Give it back to me!" he said again; "I cannot live unless I may master the
white doe! If she will come tame to my hand, no harm shall happen to her."

And when she denied him again, he gave her his bow and arrows, and bade her
shoot him to the heart, since without his word rendered back to him he could
not live.

Then his wife took both his hands and kissed them tenderly, and with loud
weeping quickly set him free of his promise. "As well," said she, "ask the
hunter to go bound to the lion's den as the white doe to come tame into your
keeping; though she loved you with all her heart, you could not look at her
and not be her enemy." She gazed on him with full affection, and sighed
deeply. "Lie down for a little," she said, "and rest; it is not till midnight
that she comes. When she comes I will wake you."

She took his head in her hands and set it upon her knee, making him lie down.
"If she will come and stand tame to my hand," he said again, "then I will do