It was even as I thought.

There lay in state, as his men had left him, a wonderful old chief, whose long, white beard swept like a snowdrift down the crimson cloak in which he was shrouded.

They had set him on just such a low, carved bedstead as that which we had found outside the house, dressed in his full mail, and helmed, and with his sword at his side, such a priceless weapon, with gold-mounted scabbard and jewelled hilt, as men have risked the terrors of grave mounds to win.

His white hand rested on the pommel, and he was facing forward as if looking toward the far shore which he was to reach through the flames.

But there was naught terrible in his look, and even my fears passed as I saw the peacefulness of that last sleep.
The smoke thinned quickly from the chamber; for it had only soaked into it from the peat against its roughly made walls, over which the fagots had been piled too heavily and closely for their purpose.