A strange minstrel, a young gleeman, had been admitted that night--one whose chain and robes bespoke him of the privileged class--and he sang in a voice which thrilled all the revellers into awed silence. He sang of the battle, of the joy of conquest, and the glories of Valhalla, where deceased warriors drank mead from the skulls of vanquished foes. And then he sang of the cold and snowy Niffelheim, where in regions of eternal frost the cowardly and guilty dead mourned their weak and wasted lives. In words of terrific force he painted their agony, where Hela, of horrid countenance, reigned supreme; where the palace was Anguish, Famine the board, Delay and Vain Hope the waiters, Precipice the threshold, and Leanness the bed.