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lordings sate them down for weariness. Folker and Hagen came forth from the hall; upon their shields the haughty warriors leaned. Wise words were spoken by the twain. Then Knight Giselher of Burgundy spake: “Forsooth, dear friends, ye may not ease you yet; ye must bear the dead from out the hall. I’ll tell you, of a truth, we shall be attacked again. They must no longer lie here beneath our feet. Ere the Huns vanquish us by storm, we’ll yet hew wounds, which shall ease my heart. For this,” quoth Giselher, “I have a steadfast mind.”

“Well is me of such a lord,” spake then Hagen. “This rede which my young master hath given us to-day would befit no one but a knight. At this, Burgundians, ye may all stand glad.”

Then they followed the rede, and to the door they bare seven thousand dead, the which they cast outside. Down they fell before the stairway to the hall, and from their kinsmen rose a full piteous wail. Some there were with such slight wounds that, had they been more gently treated, they would have waxed well again; but from the lofty fall, they must needs lie dead. Their friends bewailed this, and forsooth they had good cause.

Then spake Folker, the fiddler, a lusty knight: “Now I mark the truth of this, as hath been told me.