Then the maiden fled from the hall, glad to have gained even that
for the man, instead of the terrible death that the Danes keep for
traitors and cowards.

Now Ingvar put back the axes he had kept, saying that the girl ever
stood in his way when he would punish as a man deserved. After that
he stood for a while as if in thought, and broke out at length:

"We will see if this man can sing a death song as did Ragnar our
forefather."

And with that he waited no more, but strode out into the courtyard,
we following. And I feared what I should see; until I looked on
Beorn, and though he was yet alive, I saw that he was past feeling
aught.

They bore him out of the village to a place just inside the
trenched enclosure, and there were old stone walls, such as were
none elsewhere in the place, but as it might have been part of
Burgh or Brancaster walls that the Romans made on our shores, so
ancient that they were crumbling to decay. There they set him down,
and raised a great flat stone, close to the greatest wall, which
covered the mouth of a deep pit.

"Look therein," said Ingvar to me.

I looked, and saw that the pit was stone walled and deep, and that
out of it was no way but this hole above. The walls and floor were
damp and slimy; and when I looked closer, the dim light showed me
bones in one corner, and also that over the floor crawled reptiles,