found his eyes swim, and a deadly sickness come over him. For
several hours he lay convulsed on the ground expecting death;
but the gaunt spareness of his frame, and his unvarying
abstinence, prevailed over the poison, and he recovered slowly,
and after great anguish: but he went with feeble steps back to
the spot where the berries grew, and, plucking several, hid them
in his bosom, and by nightfall regained the city.

The next day he went forth among his father's herds, and seizing
a lamb, forced some of the berries into its stomach, and the
lamb, escaping, ran away, and fell down dead. Then Morven took
some more of the berries and boiled them down, and mixed the
juice with wine, and he gave the wine in secret to one of his
father's servants, and the servant died.

Then Morven sought the king, and coming into his presence alone,
he said unto him, "How fares my lord?"

The king sat on a couch, made of the skins of wolves, and his
eye was glassy and dim; but vast were his aged limbs and huge
was his stature, and he had been taller by a head than the
children of men, and none living could bend the bow he had bent
in youth. Grey, gaunt and worn, as some mighty bones that are
dug at times from the bosom of the earth--a relic of the
strength of old.

And the king said, faintly, and with a ghastly laugh:

"The men of my years fare ill. What avails my strength? Better
had I been born a cripple like thee, so should I have had