But when the tumult was a little abated, the Puny Fox cried
out: "O chieftain, and all ye folk! if a boat-load of gold were not
too much reward for the bringing back the dead bodies of your
friends, what reward shall he have who hath brought back their bodies
and the souls therein?"
Said the chieftain: "The man shall choose his own reward." And the
men in the hall shouted their yeasay.
Then said the Puny Fox: "Well, then, this I choose, that ye make me
one of your kindred before the fathers of old time."
They all cried out that he had chosen wisely and manfully; but
Hallblithe said: "I bid you do for him no less than this; and ye
shall wot that he is already my sworn brother-in-arms."
Now the chieftain cried out: "O Wanderers from over the sea, come up
hither and sit with us and be merry at last!"
So they went up to the dais, Hallblithe and the Hostage, and the Puny
Fox and the six maidens withal. And since the night was yet young,
the supper of the men of the Ravens was turned into the wedding-feast
of Hallblithe and the Hostage, and that very night she became a wife
of the Ravens, that she might bear to the House the best of men and
the fairest of women.
But on the morrow they brought the Puny Fox to the mote-stead of the
kindreds that he might stand before the fathers and be made a son of
the kindred; and this they did because of the word of Hallblithe, and
because they believed in the tale which he told them of the
Glittering Plain and the Acre of the Undying.
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