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 wouldst reward my services with gratitude, and behold, I found thou didst but punish me for my bravery, thou more than all others. But I withhold all vengeance, and content myself with knowing that down in thy heart thou art bitterly ashamed of thyself—that is, if the ungrateful are ever ashamed of themselves—and art thus punished for thy wrong-doing towards me. I hesitate not to say that thou art worse than all demons in fury, and all beasts in cruelty, if, after having escaped the snares of all these monsters, I have failed to be safe from thine.'

"Now the king wished to hear everything from my own lips, and bade me tell him all that had happened, right from the very beginning. He listened eagerly to everything, but could not endure to have his own god unfavorably spoken of. So terribly did it distress him to hear Utgarda-Loki reproached because of his uncleanly surroundings, and so indignant was he to hear of the god's misfortunes that he fell down dead then and there even as I proceeded with my tale. Thus while he was so zealous in the worship of a false god, he came to the gates of the true prison of sorrows. And many of the bystanders died from the effects of the hair I had plucked from the Giant's beard by way of gaining renown."

All men wondered at the marvels told by Thorkill the Stranger, and many said that even greater marvels were to be seen in Odainsakr, the Land of the Undying; none