He paused for a moment and shifted his position slightly, so that he could see the Talisman as it lay under his arm.
“You must understand, then,” he went on, “that this legend comes down to us from days when Valhalla still opened its gates to the heroes; and the spirits of winds, and woods, and streams, moved among men in their visible forms. It may be mere allegory; possibly it is the transmutation of some quite normal happening, a love tale magnified and distorted in the telling.
“One summer’s night, the legend runs, Ulric, the Lord of Friocksheim, went out into the moonlight, seeking coolness after the heat of his castle walls. And, so wandering, he came by the Pool and sat beside the water, watching the rising of the mist from the surface of the mere. As he sat thus, lost in thought, the moonlight sparkled upon something before him, and, bending forward, he grasped the Talisman. So he sat, with the armlet in his hand; and as he watched, the mists of the lake grew denser and drew closer; and there stepped at last from among their folds a maiden.”
Old Rollo bent towards the Talisman, so that his face was partly hidden from his audience.
“Very little has come down to us—only a few words in a tale. Yet even these halting words conjure up for me a wonder; a being, young, and proud, and fair, a form and grace surpassing all the beauty of women; a flash of divinity passing across the screen of the flesh.”
He let his voice drop into silence for a moment before he continued:
“The legend tells that she was betrothed to the Spirit of the Pool, the Frog King. But Ulric won her. She gave him the Talisman which she had come back to seek; and, when he desired her, he had but to dip it in the Pool and she came to him—for so long as that moon still shone. And she charged him, when she was with him, to keep the Talisman and to hand it down; for it would be the Luck of Friocksheim. And so, night after night, the Lord of Friocksheim went down to the Pool and washed the Talisman in its waters and wandered with his love in the wood beside the mere—until the moon came no more over the trees. But the next night, when he dipped the Talisman in the waters, there came swimming to him a loathsome little shape which laughed and jeered at him, saying: ‘The Frog King has her for his bride.’ ”
Old Rollo turned back towards his audience again.
“So the Dangerfield Talisman is only a reminder of an old lie. Even at the best, it’s a memorial of lying and deceit—and punishment.”
His voice sounded bitter for a moment, but he went back at once to his ordinary tone: