have spent my last days in feasting like the man before me.

But I was still too young and full of energy to take my ease. I found
myself more and more restless; I had naught to do; it had all been done.
At last I sent for old Maka.

"Ye put me up to this, ye old fraud," I told him, pretending to be
wrathful. "Now set me another task, or I'll have thy head!"

He knew me too well to be affrighted. He said that he had been
considering my case of late.

"Strokor, thy father was right when he told thee to have naught to do
with women. That is to say, he were right at the time. Were he alive
today"--I forgot to say that my father was killed in the battle across
the sea--"he would of a certainty say that it were high time for thee to
pick thy mate.

"Remember, Strokor; great though thou art, yet when death taketh thee
thy greatness is become a memory. Methinks ye should leave something
more substantial behind."

It took but little thought to convince me that Maka were right once
more. Fact; as soon as I thought upon it, it were a woman that I was
restless for. The mere notion instantly gave me something worth while to
look forward to.

"Jon bless thee!" I told the old man. "Ye have named both the trouble
and the remedy. I will attend to it at once."