they cried; and passing from words to blows, and because their mother
loved Erp best, they slew him. A little further on Saurli stumbled
and fell forward, but saved himself with one hand, and said 'Here
hand helps foot: better were it that Erp lived.' So they came on
Hermanaric as he slept, and Saurli hewed off his hands, and Hamdir
his feet, but he awoke and called for his men. Then said Hamdir:
'Were Erp alive, the head would be off, and he couldn't call out.'
Then Hermanaric's men arose and took the twain, and when they found
that no steel would touch them, an old one-eyed man gave them advice
to stone them to death. Thus fell Saurli and Hamdir, and soon after
Gudrun died too, and with her ends the Volsung and the Niflung tale.

And here it is worth while to say, since some minds are so narrowly
moulded as to be incapable of containing more than one idea, that
because it has seemed a duty to describe in its true light the old
faith of our forefathers, it by no means follows that the same eyes
are blind to the glorious beauty of Greek Mythology. That had the
rare advantage of running its course free and unfettered until it
fell rather by natural decay than before the weapon of a new belief.
The Greeks were Atheists before they became Christian. Their faith
had passed through every stage. We can contemplate it as it springs
out of the dim misshapen symbol, during that phase when men's eyes
are fixed more on meaning and reality than on beauty and form, we can
mark how it gradually looks more to symmetry and shape, how it is
transfigured in the Arts, until, under that pure air and bright sky,
the glowing radiant figures of Apollo and Aphrodite, of Zeus and
Athene--of perfect man-worship and woman-worship, stand out clear and
round in the foreground against the misty distance of ancient times.
Out of that misty distance the Norseman's faith never emerged. What
that early phase of faith might have become, had it been once wedded