"Hold up your staff, my father, that the shadow of the cross your people
worship may fall upon our path, so we will pass into the town and there
shall be peace between us, for though your gods are not our gods, faith
between man and man is of all altars."
And the Abbot held his staff aloft between Haafager's people and the sun,
it being fashioned in the form of a cross, and under its shadow the Danes
passed by into the town of seven towers, there being of them, with the
women and the children, nearly two thousand souls, and the gates were
made fast behind them.
So they who had fought face to face, feasted side by side, pledging one
another in the wine cup, as was the custom; and Haafager's men, knowing
themselves amongst friends, cast aside their arms, and when the feast was
done, being weary, they lay down to sleep.
Then an evil voice arose in the town, and said: "Who are these that have
come among us to share our land? Are not the stones of our streets red
with the blood of wife and child that they have slain? Do men let the
wolf go free when they have trapped him with meat? Let us fall upon them
now that they are heavy with food and wine, so that not one of them shall
escape. Thus no further harm shall come to us from them nor from their
children."
And the voice of evil prevailed, and the men of the town of seven towers
fell upon the Danes with whom they had broken meat, even to the women and
the little children; and the blood of the people of Haafager cried with a
loud voice at the Abbey door, through the long night it cried, saying:--
"I trusted in your spoken word. I broke meat with you. I put my faith
in you and in your God. I passed beneath the shadow of your cross to
enter your doors. Let your God make answer!"
Nor was there silence till the dawn.