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Rh come between. Then spake Sir Gernot of Burgundy: “What availeth you now, Hagen, the chaplain’s death? Had another done the deed, ’t would have irked you sore. For what cause have ye sworn enmity to the priest?”

The clerk now tried to swim with might and main, for he would fain save his life, if perchance any there would help him. That might not be, for the stalwart Hagen was wroth of mood. He thrust him to the bottom, the which thought no one good. When the poor priest saw naught of help, he turned him back again. Sore was he discomfited, but though he could not swim, yet did God’s hand help him, so that he came safe and sound to the land again. There the poor clerk stood and shook his robe. Hagen marked thereby that naught might avail against the tidings which the wild mermaids told him. Him-thought: “These knights must lose their lives.”

When the liegemen of the three kings unloaded the skiff and had borne all away which they had upon it, Hagen brake it to pieces and threw it in the flood, at which the bold knights and good did marvel much.

“Wherefore do ye that, brother,” quoth Dankwart, “how shall we come over, when we ride homeward from the Huns, back to the Rhine?”

Later Hagen told him that might not be. The hero of Troneg spake: “I do it in the hope that if we have a coward on this journey, who through faint-heartedness would run away, that in this stream he may die a shameful death.”

They had with them from Burgundy land a hero of his hands, the which was named Folker. Wisely he