Now at the words of the stranger the suspicion that had hung over Hunding's heart like a poised hawk grew suddenly nearer, as if it stooped to its prey, for even in the manner in which the stranger told them his sister had been lost to him, in that manner was his own wife won. Well he remembered how the mother fought for the daughter, but at the end she was slain, and the house burnt, and the girl carried off by force; and again the strange likeness of the two struck on his heart. As for his wife Sieglinde, her face was a mask, and she only gazed at the stranger with wide, grey eyes, and what she thought no man knew, and least of all her husband. Also he had heard stories of the Wolf and the Whelp, as the forest folk called them, and now the Whelp told the tale himself. But since he must needs know more yet, he curbed himself.
"Wehwalt," said he; "Wehwalt, the Wolfs whelp, it is a strange story that thou tellest us. Of thy name in stories of strife and war I have heard men tell. Yet saw I never the Wolf thy father nor his son till to-day."
He would have said more, but Sieglinde, her eyes all aflame, interrupted him. "Tell us the rest," she cried, and her voice strangled in her throat, for if Hunding remembered how his wife was carried off from the burnt home, should not she remember? "Tell us where thy father is to-day? Where is his home? Is it near—is it near?" she cried.
Then the stranger shook his head.
"Thou shalt hear," he said, "and I will tell thee all. For after the burning of the house, and the murder of my mother, and the seizing of my sister, ever more fiercely did the accursed Niedings press on us, for the blood, maybe, had whetted them. But the Wolf was ever stronger and more cunning than the men, and day after day he drove them through the forest, and in his paths the dead lay thick. Even as a ship scatters the spray in clouds before its bows, even so they fell off spent from his advance, and he passed on over them, I with him, heeding them as little, as they writhed in their death agonies, as the ship heeds the billows it ploughs through. Thus fared we till the day came when my father was not. A wolf-skin I found in the forest, but of him no trace. And whether he is dead I know not, or whether," and his eye brightened "whether he was not of mortal birth, and his work there was finished, and he went whither he would."
For a moment he paused, and on one side the eager grey eyes of the woman met his, and by her sat her husband, whose black eyes smouldered with hate that was scarce concealed. But in the light of the grey eyes he forgot the black.
"Wanting him," he said, "I left the forest and lived among men and women of civilized race. Yet wherever I went, whether I sought for friend only, or sought for wife, I prospered not, and he who should have been friend turned from me, and she whom I sought for wife thought scorn of me, for ill-luck was ever about my path. Did I think a thing right? That was enough: to all others the deed seemed foul. Did I think a deed false? To all others it appeared fair. And thus I was at war with the whole world. About my path watched hate, and anger against me grew like weeds in the bush. Did I seek for joy? Bitterness was mine, and woe and sorrow. Thus came I to call myself Wehwalt, for woe was my fate. So I named myself to fit my fate."
Then Hunding wiped his mouth, for he had made an end of eating, and laughed bitterly.
"Truly then thou hast named thyself," said he, "if none to whom thou goest as a guest is glad at thy coming, and slow to love thee, and grieves not when thou goest And indeed such seems to be thy case."
At that Sieglinde turned and faced her husband, as she had never faced him before.