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264 with the warriors, as our need constraineth us, for our meiny lieth dead before them, undeserved.”

“If I must be chamberlain,” quoth the valiant man, “I well wot how to serve such mighty kings and will guard the stairway, as doth become mine honors.” Naught could have been more loth to Kriemhild’s knights.

“Much it wondereth me,” spake Hagen, “what the Hunnish knights be whispering in here. I ween, they ’d gladly do without the one that standeth at the door, and who told the courtly tale to us Burgundians. Long since I have heard it said of Kriemhild, that she would not leave unavenged her dole of heart. Now let us drink to friendship and pay for the royal wine. The young lord of the Huns shall be the first.”

Then the good knight Hagen smote the child Ortlieb, so that the blood spurted up the sword towards his hand and the head fell into the lap of the queen. At this there began a murdering, grim and great, among the knights. Next he dealt the master who taught the child a fierce sword-stroke with both his hands, so that his head fell quickly beneath the table to the ground. A piteous meed it was, which he meted out to the master. Hagen then spied a gleeman sitting at King Etzel’s board. In his wrath he hied him thither and struck off his right hand upon the fiddle. “Take this as message to the Burgundian land.”

“Woe is me of my hand,” spake the minstrel Werbel. “Sir Hagen of Troneg, what had I done to you? I eame in good faith to your masters’ land. How can I now thrum the tunes, sith I have lost my hand?”

Little reeked Hagen, played he nevermore. In the