voice: 'Sisters, I knew him far away by the redness of his heart
under his silver skin'; and then another spoke: 'Sisters, I knew him
because his heart fluttered like a bird under a net of silver cords
'; and then another took up the word: 'Sisters, I knew him because
his heart sang like a bird that is happy in a silver cage.' And after
that they sang together, those who were nearest rocking the cradle
with long wrinkled fingers; and their voices were now tender and
caressing, now like the wind blowing in the great wood, and this was
their song:

Out of sight is out of mind:
Long have man and woman-kind,
Heavy of will and light of mood,
Taken away our wheaten food,
Taken away our Altar stone;
Hail and rain and thunder alone,
And red hearts we turn to grey,
Are true till Time gutter away.

When the song had died out, the crone who had first spoken, said: 'We
have nothing more to do but to mix a drop of our blood into his
blood.' And she scratched her arm with the sharp point of a spindle,
which she had made the nurse bring to her, and let a drop of blood,
grey as the mist, fall upon the lips of the child; and passed out
into the darkness. Then the others passed out in silence one by one;
and all the while the child had not opened his pink eyelids or the
fire ceased to dance, for the one was too ignorant and the other too
full of gaiety to know what great beings had bent over the cradle.

When the crones were gone, the nurse came to her courage again, and