he abideth in the wild wood._

They joined battle again, but the fight grew feeble after Volsung
fell, and his earls were struck down one by one. Last of all, his sons
were borne to earth and carried captive to the hall, where Siggeir
awaited them, for he himself had feared to face the Volsung swords.

Then he would have slain them at once without torture, but Signy
besought him that they might breathe the earthly air a day or two
before their death, and he listened to her, for he saw how he might
thus give them greater pain. He bade his men lead them to a glade in
the forest and fetter them to the mightiest tree that grew there. So
the ten Volsungs were fettered with iron to a great oak, and on the
morrow Siggeir's woodmen told him sweet tidings, for beasts of the
wood had devoured two and left their bones in the fetters. So it
befell every night till the woodmen brought word that nothing
remained of the king's foemen save their bones in the fetters that
had bound them.

Now a watch had been set on Signy lest she should send help to her
brethren, but henceforth no man hindered her from going out to the
wood. So that night she came to the glade in the forest, and saw in
the midst of it a mighty man who was toiling to dig a grave in the
greensward.

And behold, it was Sigmund the Volsung: but she cried and had no fear:

"If thou art living, Sigmund, what day's work dost thou here
In the midnight and the forest? but if thou art nought but a ghost
Then where are those Volsung brethren, of whom thou wert best and most?"