“I climbed the hut last night and gave him nine stones, and bade him
throw them one by one over his left shoulder, and each time a stone
of the wall would fall down, till free space was left him to escape,
and this he did; and before sunrise this morning he fled away, and has
joined the king’s army; but his grave is ready, and in three days he
will be in this ground, for his doom is spoken.”
When the farmer heard these words, he rushed like mad to the hut, and
called his son by name; but no answer came. Then he climbed up and
looked in through the hole at the top, but no sign of his son was
there. And he wrung his hands in despair, and went home and spake no
word, but sat moaning with his head buried in his hands.
And on the third day he heard the steps of men outside, and he rose up,
for he knew they were bearing the body of his dead son to the door. And
he went out to meet them, and there lay the corpse of the young man on
the bier, pale and beautiful, struck through and through by a spear,
even as he had died in battle.
And they laid him in the churchyard, just as the witch-woman had
foretold, while all the people wept, for the young man was noble to
look upon, and of a good and upright spirit.
But the father neither spoke nor wept. His mind was gone, and his heart
was broken. And soon he lay down and died, unpitied by all; for he
was hard and cruel in his life, and no man wept for him; and all the
riches he had gathered by grinding down the poor melted away, and his
race perished from the land, and his name was heard of no more, and no
blessing rested on his memory.