Moreover, they declared, many of them, that while the song went on they could think of nothing else, and that strange and wonderful visions passed before their eyes.

But of this nobody can know the truth for certain, as the woman and her husband died long ago." "You see," said Mr.Fregelius, when he had finished translating the passage aloud, "it is not wonderful that I thought it unlucky when I heard that you had found Stella singing this same song upon the ship, much as centuries ago her ancestress, Saevuna, sang it while she and her husband died." "At any rate, the omen fulfilled itself," answered Morris, with a sigh, "and she, too, died with the song upon her lips, though I do not think that it had anything to do with these things, which were fated to befall." "Well," said the clergyman, "the fate is fulfilled now, and the song will never be sung again.

She was the last of her race, and it was a law among them that neither words nor music should ever be written down." When such old tales and legends were exhausted, and, outside the immediate object of their search, some of them were of great interest to a man who, like Morris, had knowledge of Norse literature, and was delighted to discover in Mr.Fregelius a scholar acquainted with the original tongues in which they were written, these companions fell back upon other matters.

But all of them had to do with Stella.

One night the clergyman read some letters written by her as a child from Denmark.
On another he produced certain dolls which she had dressed at the same period of her life in the costume of the peasants of that country.