for the Father of the Gods; how shall he deal with his own daughter,
who has disobeyed him?

"The fire is burning a little better now, but it does not yet seem to
be quite on good terms with the wind outside. The smoke is going up
again instead of down, and that is an improvement. It rises in sudden
puffs and flurries, like clouds flying across the sky after a storm.
The shadows of the clouds fall upon a mountain height, a rugged, rocky,
wild, beautiful place, where the daughters of the god are meeting to
ride home together with the heroes they have brought from some field of
battle. Now and then, as the quick flames leap up into the smoke, I can
see another and another coming, riding on her flying horse, racing with
the driving wind and the hurrying clouds, each with her warrior lying
before her across her saddle, and so alighting here and joining her
sisters. They are all here at last except the one Daughter of the God
whom we have seen before, and now she comes, but she brings no warrior
across her saddle, only the poor woman with whom she fled from the
fight.

"She tells her sisters how she has disobeyed their father, and she begs
them to protect her and the woman against his anger. They dare not help
her; never has one of them done anything that was not his will. What
can she do? He is coming in pursuit of her; sooner or later he must
find her, but she may at least save the woman. She bids her flee alone
while she waits with her sisters for her father and her punishment to
come. Far away, she tells her, there is a deep forest, and in the
forest is a cave where the horrible dragon that was once the giant
keeps and guards his treasure. So much does the Father of the Gods
dread the curse that the wicked dwarf laid upon the ring, and the doom
which he knows is coming to himself because of his own sin, that he