HOUSE-CARL.
[Calls.] Sir Bengt, Sir Bengt! haste forth with all the speed
you can! Knut Gesling with an armed train is drawing near the house.
BENGT.
[Putting down the goblet.] Knut Gesling? Who brings the tidings?
HOUSE-CARL.
Some of your guests espied him on the road beneath, and hastened
back to warn you.
BENGT.
E'en so. Then will I--! Fetch me my grandfather's battle-axe!
[He and the HOUSE-CARL go out at the back.
[Soon after, GUDMUND and SIGNE enter quietly and cautiously
by the door at the back.
SIGNE. [In muffled tones.]
It must then, be so!
GUDMUND. [Also softly.]
Necessity's might
Constrains us.
SIGNE.
Oh! thus under cover of night
To steal from the valley where I was born?
[Dries her eyes.
Yet shalt thou hear no plaint forlorn.
'Tis for thy sake my home I flee;
Wert thou not outlawed, Gudmund dear,
I'd stay with my sister.
GUDMUND.
Only to be
Ta'en by Knut Gesling, with bow and spear,
Swung on the croup of his battle-horse,
And made his wife by force.
SIGNE.
Quick, let us flee. But whither go?
GUDMUND.
Down by the fiord a friend I know;
He'll find us a ship. O'er the salt sea foam
We'll sail away south to Denmark's bowers.
There waits you there a happy home;
Right joyously will fleet the hours;
The fairest of flowers they bloom in the shade
Of the beech-tree glade.
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