“If you will allow us without further hinderance to go back to our people, we pledge our lives and our honor that we will straightway send you gold, as much as half a thousand horses can carry.”
Then Gunther turned to Siegfried, and said,—
“What think you, friend Siegfried, of such princely ransom?”
“Noble lord,” said Siegfried, “I think you are in need of no such ransom. Friendship is worth much more than gold. If your kingly captives will promise, on their honor, never more to come towards Burgundy as enemies, let them go. We have no need of gold.”
“‘Tis well said,” cried Gunther highly pleased.
And Leudiger and Leudigast, with tears of thankfulness, gladly made the asked-for promise, and on the morrow, with light hearts and costly gifts, they set out on their journey homewards.
When all the guests had gone, and the daily routine of idle palace-life set in again, Siegfried began to talk of going back to Nibelungen Land. But young Giselher, and the peerless Kriemhild, and King Gunther, besought him to stay yet a little longer. And he yielded to their kind wishes. And autumn passed away with its fruits and its vintage, and grim old winter came howling down from the north, and Siegfried was still in Burgundy. And then old Hoder, the king of the winter months, came blustering through the Rhine valley; and with him were the Reifriesen,—the thieves that steal the daylight from the earth and the warmth from the sun. And they nipped the flowers, and withered the grass, and stripped the trees, and sealed up the rivers, and covered the earth with a white mantle of sorrow.
But within King Gunther’s wide halls there was joy and good cheer. And the season of the Yule-feast came, and still Siegfried tarried in Burgundy-land.