the dragon in his den, Beowulf, foreboding ill but ever careful of his comrades, bids them remain out of harm's way while he does "deeds of earlship," and then, advancing single, addresses the dragon also, not in friendly wise.

So the fight begins, but goes not well for Beowulf, who soon finds himself encompassed by the dragon's fiery breath and suffering sore straits. And now 66 not at all do his close comrades courageously crowd round him," but betake them to the wood to save their skins and lives. They had not been trained to such a business as this: fighting winged furnaces was scarcely in the current practice of Companionship.

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Well, perhaps not, ye discreet or panic-stricken; but the perfect spirit of a practice pauses at no letter in its law. So inspirited was one at least among that throng. Wiglaf was he named, "a loved shield-warrior." He, when he saw his lord beneath the battle-mask, laboring from the heat, bethought him then of all the honors that in former days his prince had given him, the wealthy homestead of his family and every folk-right that his father owned. He might not then hold back " -had to go, urged by his gratitude" but grasped his shield and drew his olden blade. That was the first time the young warrior must bear the brunt of battle with his own dear lord. His soul melted not away, nor did the sword left of his kinsman weaken in the fight; this the dragon found out when they met together."

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First, however, says our poet, he addressed his distant, quite inauditory comrades, more lengthily, I must believe, than any living Wiglaf would have done, but not badly, nor does the didacticism trouble me as it might some. Wiglaf," says our bard, "spoke many a righteous word, for his soul was sorrowful; he said to his comrades: I mind me of the time we drank the mead, how we vowed then to our lord in mead-hall, unto him who gave these rings to us, that we would repay him for our battle trappings, for those helmets and well-tempered swords, if thislike need should chance to him. . . . Now is the day come that our liege-lord needs the strength of goodly warriors. Let us go to him. As for me God knoweth I had liefer far the fire should

enfold my body with my giver of gold. . . I trow well it were not the debt long due him that of all his folk he bear the brunt, fall in the strife. Sword and helmet, shield and mail-coat shall be one for both of us.' He went then through the slaughter-reek, bore aid to his lord."

But of the terrible beauties of the mixed combat that follows my tiresome determination to be only incidentally entertaining forbids me to discourse in full, and my affectionate regard allows no scanting. The unfamiliar reader, if regretful, may obtain them finely Englished-in prose for the small price of one dime, poetry at proportionately higher rates. We shall stick to the didactic.

In short, then, the sword of Beowulf betrays him in the strife, his several horse-power strength of hand (for thus the bard exonerates the blade and glorifies the bearer) trying overmuch any sword whatever; the dragon with his bitter fangs takes in all the hero's throat, and Beowulf's lifeblood wells forth in waves. But thane Wiglaf, heeding not the dragon's head or his own burnt hand, manages to smite the flaming foe a little lower; his sword sinks in; and the fire begins to fail. Through such perforation, and escape of fiery strength, or possibly by sudden draught upon his heating apparatus, the dragon now grows languid, and it is not long before the two are able to bisect him. Beowulf, however, has been done for, and soon thereafter his soul departs, leaving only his earlship to be praised, "as was meet in those times, that a man should foster a lord's fame and hold him in heart when he must forth from the body to become as a thing of nought."

We, however, have chief notice still to take of those he left behind, "who bore now with shamed faces their shields and war-weeds where the old man lay. They looked on Wiglaf, who sat wearied at the shoulder of his lord, trying with cold water to awaken him. No whit, however, might he speed thereby.

"To the youth then was a grim answer easy to find for those whose courage had before that fled. Wiglaf spake, the son of Weohstan; sorrowful of

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heart the hero looked on them he scorned: This, lo! may he say that will speak sooth, that your own lord, he who gave you all these treasures, the troop-trappings that ye stand in, when he on the ale-bench often gave those sitting in the hall, the king to his thanes, helms and burnies of the best, -that he then in wretched wise threw utterly away that battle-gear, so soon as warfare should befall him. Truly, not at all the folk-king needed boast his comrades in the battle. Defenders too few thronged about their prince when the time. of peril came upon him. Now shall hope of treasure-taking and the gift of swords, all inherited delights of home, fail from your kindred. Of your homesteads every man must go, empty of his land-right, after athelings afar have heard tell of your flight, of your inglorious deed. Death is better for every earl than a life of infamy.''

No mercy, my Wiglaf, no forgiveness to men's frailty; nor even to the innocent of second and third generations? A bad business this; but indeed a custom that must be obeyed in those times when a family stood or fell together. More than fear of the like fate had urged thee forward, more than shrinking from disgrace or inner shame. Pure love spurred thee, kept thee steadfast, sped thy stroke. Hail to thee, thane Wiglaf: a true type of goodness I declare thee, in spirit not far from the highest. Or does not the term apply to perfect loyalty, but only to the quiet cultivation of small virtues for a payment, or perhaps for

their own poor sake? A question which may ultimately seem worth our consideration. Meanwhile, what more should we remark of thee, my Wiglaf, thane worthy beyond telling?

5. HISTORICAL

"Much enthusiasm for a phantom," mutters Matter-of-factness; "for was not Thane Wiglaf merely that?" True enough; but after all how came that phantom-figure to be bodied forth? There must, I guess, have been some matter for imagining it out of, some material at hand from which the maker took a hint or two. How many

a Wiglafian warrior, may we well suppose, gave somewhat to this making, and, otherwise forgotten, gained thus a pseudonymous immortality! Canst thou not thyself, O reader, body-forth such forest-combat,- not of needs with dragon, nowadays an unfamiliar beast,- but at least with bear original of Grendel, some suggest — or other suchlike animal? Or, again, a forest-fire or a domestic conflagration might have been behind these elements of the impossible,- not to mention numerous mythic possibilities, of which not one, however, can in the slightest damage the deep probability of those strong human figures for whom they are, in fact, no unbecoming background and time-atmosphere.

Or if the reader would deal rather with a verified reality alone, let him look at this scene of an