Her face was changed amidst her finery, and
the faces of her guests were changed as they beheld her: fear puckered
their brows, fear drew back their feet; and she took her doom from the
looks of them, and fled to her bed-place. There she flung herself on the
wife's coverlet, and turned her face against the wall. That was the end of all the words of Aud; and in the small hours on the
clock her spirit wended. Asdis had come to and fro, seeing if she might
help, where was no help possible of man or woman. It was light in the
bed-place when the maid returned, for a taper stood upon a chest. There
lay Aud in her fine clothes, and there by her side on the bed the big
dead wife Thorgunna squatted on her hams. No sound was heard, but it
seemed by the movement of her mouth as if Thorgunna sang, and she waved
her arms as if to singing. "God be good to us!" cried Asdis, "she is dead." "Dead," said the dead wife. "Is the weird passed?" cried Asdis. "When the sin is done the weird is dreed," said Thorgunna, and with that
she was not. But the next day Eyolf and Asdis caused build a fire on the shore betwixt
tide-marks. There they burned the bed-clothes, and the clothes, and the
jewels, and the very boards of the waif woman's chests; and when the tide
returned it washed away their ashes. So the weird of Thorgunna was
lifted from the house on Frodis Water. PRINTED BY
BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED