"Look therein," said Ingvar to me.
I looked, and saw that the pit was stone walled and deep, and that out of it was no way but this hole above. The walls and floor were damp and slimy; and when I looked closer, the dim light showed me bones in one corner, and also that over the floor crawled reptiles, countless.
"An adder is a small thing to sting a man," said Ingvar in his grim voice. "Nor will it always hurt him much. Yet if a man is so close among many that he must needs tread on one, and it bites him, and in fleeing that he must set foot on another, and again another, and then more--how will that end?"
I shuddered and turned away.
"In such a place did Ella of Northumbria put my forebear, Ragnar Lodbrok; and there he sang the song {[xiii]} we hold most wondrous of all. There he was set because he was feared, and Northumbria knows what I thought of that matter. But Beorn goes here for reasons which you know. And East Anglia shall know what my thoughts are of those reasons."
Then two men seized Beorn and cast him into that foul pit, stripped of all things, and the stone fell.
But Beorn moved not nor cried out, and I think that even as Ulfkytel had boded, stripped of life itself was he before the bottom of the pit was reached.
So the justice of Ulfkytel the Earl came to pass. But the lies spoken by Beorn were not yet paid for.