indescribable awe when Hilda stood before her, the red light playing
on the Vala's stern marble face, and contrasting robes of funereal
black. But, with all her awe, Githa, who, not educated like her
daughter Edith, had few feminine resources, loved the visits of her
mysterious kinswoman. She loved to live her youth over again in
discourse on the wild customs and dark rites of the Dane; and even her
awe itself had the charm which the ghost tale has to the child;--for
the illiterate are ever children. So, recovering her surprise, and
her first pause, she rose to welcome the Vala, and said:

"Hail, Hilda, and thrice hail! The day has been warm and the way
long; and, ere thou takest food and wine, let me prepare for thee the
bath for thy form, or the bath for thy feet. For as sleep to the
young, is the bath to the old."

Hilda shook her head.

"Bringer of sleep am I, and the baths I prepare are in the halls of
Valhalla. Offer not to the Vala the bath for mortal weariness, and
the wine and the food meet for human guests. Sit thee down, daughter
of the Dane, and thank thy new gods for the past that hath been thine.
Not ours is the present, and the future escapes from our dreams; but
the past is ours ever, and all eternity cannot revoke a single joy
that the moment hath known."

Then seating herself in Godwin's large chair, she leant over her seid-
staff, and was silent, as if absorbed in her thoughts.

"Githa," she said at last, "where is thy lord? I came to touch his
hands and to look on his brow."