"We have no time to wait for him; it is his fault if he be left," said Grim.

"That knowledge would doubtless comfort him," replied Estein; "but nevertheless I shall wait."

"Here they come!" cried Helgi.

"And here come those who will reach us before them," said another man.

He was right. A swarm of men were already running down the slope, and it was clear that they must reach the boat first.

Estein sprang on board.

"Push off!" he cried; "we will row along the shore to meet them."

"Well thought of," said Helgi; "'tis lucky we have one cool head with us."

The pursuers at first either failed to see Ketill's party, or mistook them for their own men, for they continued their headlong rush straight to the water, firing arrows and darts as they ran. Then they saw the manoeuvre, and turned with loud cries along the shore. The boat had got a start by this time; the rowers bent their backs and made her spring like a live thing, and the still water rose in oily waves from the bow. But fast as they pulled, the men on shore ran faster.

"By all the gods, we are too late!" cried Helgi.

"They take to the water!" said Estein. "Pull, men, pull! Oh, 'tis a night worth living for!"

The four swimmers stoutly struck out for dear life, to a splashing accompaniment of darts and stones.

"By the hammer of Thor! they will be struck as we take them on board," exclaimed Helgi. "Friend Ketill makes a generous mark."

"Round them!" said Estein. "Get between them and the shore."

Grim pressed the tiller hard down, and circling round the swimmers they were presently hauling them in on the sheltered side. Then the crowd on shore set off for their ships. Ketill, dripping with water, and bleeding from an arrow wound on the shoulder, watched them with a grim smile.

"They will find their ships ready for sea," he said.

As he spoke a tongue of flame shot up from one of the long ships, and Estein turned to him in surprise.

"Then you set them on fire?"

"Ay," replied Ketill; "we slew some guards—who thereby learned not to sleep at their posts—and made such holes in the ships as will take them two days to patch. Then I bethought me it were well to have a burning, if it were only of a long ship; so we kindled three great fires, one for each vessel, and if the men of Liot feel cold to-night, it will not be my fault. But have you got Liot?"

"Here he is," said Estein, pointing to the pinioned captive.

Ketill laughed loud and long.

"Estein," he cried, "I ask your pardon. You may be under a spell, but you have given us a merry night's work. We have earned a long drink."



CHAPTER VII.

THE VERDICT OF THE SWORD.

A shout of congratulation rose from the ship as the boat drew near and the anxious watchers counted the fourteen men returned again with their prisoner. Drink was served round in huge beakers, and the superstitious fears vanished like the fog as they rowed in triumph out of the bay.

They could see behind them the flames and smoke rising ever higher from the burning vessels, and as the ale mounted to their heads they shouted derisive defiance across the water.

"Where shall we go now?" asked Grim.

"Do you know of any uninhabited holm where we could land by daybreak?" said Estein.

"There are many such about the Orkneys; one I know well, which methinks we should reach soon after sunrise. There I shall take you."

Ketill came up at that moment with a great horn of ale, and cried, with a joviality only shown when drink flowed freely,—

"Drink, Estein, drink!—drink to the soul of Liot Skulison, which shall shortly speed to Valhalla. Shall we slay him now, or keep that sport till we have better light to see him die?"

"I have other work on hand than drinking. Liot and I have an account to settle at daybreak."

Ketill stared at him in astonishment.

"You mean then in very truth to fight?" he cried. "Well, do as you wish; but it is a strange spell."

He left the poop with his horn, and Estein seated himself on a stool, and leaning back against the bulwarks, tried to rest.

His face was set, his mind made up, and he only waited impatiently for the hour of his trial. Sleep came to him in uneasy snatches, during which he seemed to pass years of wild adventure, haunted all the time by strangely distorted Oslas. He woke at last to the chill of a grey morning and the roll of a Viking ship. With a little shiver he started to his feet, and began to pace the deck.

Presently Helgi joined him, and laid his hand on his arm.

"Estein," he said, "tempt not your fate too far. Never before have I seen witchcraft such as this. Why should you fear the wrath of the gods? I tell you, my brother, you are under a spell; let us seek some magician who will cure you, and not rashly look for death when you are wearied with sleepless nights and black magic. If the wrath of the gods is really on you, it will fall were you to flee from men and seek refuge in the loneliest cave on all these coasts. I will slay Liot Skulison for you; in fair fight if you will, though I think not he deserves such a chance. Was it a fair fight when he fell on our two ships with his ten?"

"I would slay him, Helgi, like a dog, were it not that something within me bids me ask in this wise the wishes of Odin."

"'Tis the voice of yon witch."

"She is no witch, Helgi, only the fairest girl in all the North. Listen, and I will tell you the story of this spell; but remember it is to you alone I tell it, and never must another know of my shame."

"Have you ever known me betray your trust?"

"Never, Helgi, my brother, or you would not hear this tale. To me it seems the story of six years of my life, though it was scarcely as many weeks; but I shall make it as brief as I may."

"The hour is yet early."

"After the battle, Helgi, I should have been drowned but for that maid you saw. She saved my life, and that at least I owe her. She brought me to the abode of her father, the hermit of the Holy Isle; and there I learned to love her. For six weeks I was no Viking. I forgot my kinsfolk and my country, forgot all but Osla."

"Call you not that a spell?"

"Did you not say yourself that you had known many spells like that, cast on men by maids? It was the magic of love that entangled me."

"Men said the hermit was a wizard."

"No wizard, Helgi, or he had never let me come there. He was a moody and fitful old man. I pleased him with my songs, talked to him of the strange religion he professes—for he is what men call a Christian—and grew in time to think of him as a friend. (Verily, I think there must have been magic!) All this while I spoke no word of love to Osla, though I think she was not indifferent to me."

"It was easy to see that."

"Twice on that island a voice I could not name warned me from beyond the grave, but I heeded it not. (Can the man have been a wizard?) One night—it was the night you landed, Helgi—I sat alone with the hermit. Something had moved him to talk. I remember now! it was a song I sung myself. He told me a tale of a burning.

"Helgi, he had hardly begun ere I knew the end, and could name my warning voice. The tale was the burning of Laxafiord, and the voice was my brother Olaf's."

"And the hermit?"

"Is Thord the Tall, the last of the burners."

"Is! Then you slew him not?"

"My dagger was drawn, I was bending towards him, when I heard without the steps of Osla. I fled—ask me not what I thought or what I did. Thord the Tall and I both live, and I would know whether the gods would have it so. Wherefore I meet Liot this morning."

"Then you have spared Olaf's burner for the sake of the burner's daughter?"

"I had eaten his bread and shared his dwelling for six weeks, and but for that daughter I had never lived to meet him."

"He slew your brother, Estein."

"There is no need to remind me of that."

"Methinks there is; he still lives."

"And I still love his daughter."

Estein turned away as he spoke, and gazed with folded arms over the grey waters.

Helgi looked at him in silence; then he went up to his side.

"Forgive me, Estein," he said, "and let Odin judge you. I love you too well to be aught but a friend whatever you may do."

"Helgi! but for you I think I should fall upon my sword."

His friend tried to force a laugh, but it came hard.

"Nay, rather seek a sword for Liot Skulison, for I see we are nearing the holm."

"I had forgotten Liot," said Estein. "We will loose his bonds, and let him choose his weapons."

He found Liot sitting in the waist bound hand and foot. His eye was as firm as if he had been in his own hall, and he looked up indifferently as Estein approached.

"Do you remember me, Liot?" asked his captor.

"Ay, Estein. You, methinks, are one of the bairns I thought I had slain. Well was it for you that the Orkney tides run strong. But the luck has changed, I see; and you were a bold man, Estein Hakonson, to change it as you did. Why did you not burn us out?"

"Because I wanted you alone."

"Ay, torture is a pleasant game for the torturers. How do you intend that I shall die?"

"By my sword, if the gods will it. In an hour, Liot, we fight to the death. Our battle-ground is yonder holm, the weapons you may choose yourself; and meanwhile I shall loose your bonds, and if you wish to eat or drink you may."

A look of blank astonishment came over the Viking captain's face.

"This is a merry jest, Estein," he said.

"It is no jest.—Loose his bonds, men."

Liot gave a shout of joy.

"Estein," he cried, "you are a brave man, but I think you are fey."

"That will soon be seen."

The Viking's cool indifference gave place to the most exuberant excitement. Like everybody else he thought that Estein was either mad or the victim of some enchantment; but so long as he was going to strike a good blow for life, he cared not how the chance had come. He called for ale and meat, and with the eye of an old soldier carefully picked his weapons; while the men around him muttered to each other that Estein was surely fey.

All this time they had been sailing eastwards before a light breeze. The sun had long been up, but the whole sky was obscured by light clouds, and there was an early morning feel in the air. Nearly the whole length of the wide and lonely firth that divides Orkney from the Scottish coast lay behind them, and close ahead they saw the little island that Grim had chosen for the meeting- place. When they had reached the holm they anchored the ship close inshore, and two boat-loads of men were first sent to prepare the field of battle. Then when all was ready the two combatants, attended by Helgi and Ketill, were rowed ashore.

Liot was gay and cheerful as a man going to a feast; while Estein sat silent in the stern, his thoughts busy with a landing at another island.

"You need ale, Estein," said his opponent; "a man going to fight should be gay."

"It is more fitting," replied Helgi, "for the man who comes back to be cheerful."

"Well said," said Ketill.

Liot only laughed, and springing ashore before the boat had touched the rocks, cried,—

"I had little thought to have such a pleasant morning. We will finish what we began before, Estein."

"Ay, we will finish," said Estein.

They found a wide ring marked off with stones, and in this the two champions took their stand. Each was armed with a helmet and a coat of ring-mail, and bore in his right hand a sword, and in his left a long, heart-shaped shield. Round their waists another sword was girded, though there was likely to be little time to draw this. In height and build they were very equally matched, but men noticed that Estein moved more lightly on his feet.

In a loud voice Ketill proclaimed that whoever should withdraw outside the ring of stones should ever after bear the name of dastard.

Then all went outside the circle, and with a shout Liot sprang at his foe. Estein caught the sword on his shield, and in return delivered such a storm of blows that Liot got no chance for a blow in return. He began to give ground, Estein pressing him hotly, his blade flashing so fast that men could not follow it. It was easily seen that in quickness and dexterity with his weapon Liot was inferior to his foe; but with wary eye and cool head he kept well covered with his shield, shifting his ground all the time. Twice he was nearly driven over the line, but each time saved himself by a rapid side movement.

"I fear that Estein will tire," muttered Helgi.

"Ay; he has started too hard," replied Ketill.

It seemed as if they were right. Estein's blows became less frequent, and Liot in turn attacked hotly. He made as little impression, however, as Estein, and then by mutual consent both men stopped for a minute's breathing-space.

"You seem tired, Estein," said Liot.

"Guard yourself," was the reply, and the fight began again. As before, Estein attacked hotly, Liot steadily giving ground.

"Too hard, too hard! after two sleepless nights he cannot fight long like this," exclaimed Helgi.

So thought Liot, and he bided his time with patience. He was opposed, however, by one of the best and most determined swordsmen in Norway, and Estein as well as any one knew the risk he ran. He rained in his blows like a hailstorm; but fast though they came, he was sparing his strength, and there was less vigour in his attack than there seemed. He bent all his energies on driving Liot back on the ring, shifting his ground as fast as his foe, heading off his attempts to move round, and all the while watching keenly for an opening.

"He wins, Ketill! he wins!" cried Helgi.

"Ay," said the black-bearded captain; "there is little skill we can teach Estein."

As they neared the stones, Estein's onset became more furious than ever; sword and shield had to shift up and down, right and left, to guard his storm of blows, and all the while Liot was being driven back the faster towards one place where larger stones than usual had been used to make the ring. In vain he sprang suddenly to one side; Estein was before him, and his blade nearly found its way home. Two paces more Liot gave way, and then his heel struck a boulder. For an instant he lost his balance, and that moment was his last on earth. As the shield shifted, Estein's sword came full on his neck, and it was only the bairn-slayer's body that fell without the ring.

"Bring the spades!" cried Ketill—"a fitting enough epitaph for Liot Skulison."

His conqueror was already in Helgi's arms.

"I thought I should have had to avenge you, Estein. My heart is light again."

"Odin has answered me, Helgi."

"And the spell is broken?"

"No; that spell, I fear, will break only with my death-wound."

Helgi laughed out of pure light-heartedness.

"There are fair maids in the south lands," he said.

"I go to Norway," replied Estein. "I would fain see the pine woods again."

That evening they saw the Orkneys faint and far away astern, and Estein, as he watched them fade into the dusk, would have given all Norway to hear again the roost run clamorous off the Holy Isle.



CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE CELL BY THE ROOST.

On the rocky shore of the Holy Isle, Osla sat alone. The spell of summer weather had passed from the islands, and in its wake the wind blew keenly from the north, and the grey cloud-drift hurried low overhead. All colour had died out of land and sea; the hills looked naked and the waters cold.

And Vandrad, the sea-rover, had gone with the sunshine—had gone, never so Osla said to herself, to return again.

She rose and tried to give her thoughts a lighter turn, but the note of the north wind smote drearily upon her ears, and she left the sea-shore with a sigh. For seven uneventful years she had found in the sea a friend of whom she never tired, and on the little island duties enough to make the days pass swiftly by. Why should the time now hang heavy on her hands?

She walked slowly to the wind-swept cells. Her father sat within, the blackness of night upon his soul, the Viking fire now burned completely out.

She tried to rouse him, but he answered only in absent monosyllables. Again she sought the solace of the sea, but never, it seemed to her, had it looked so cold and so unfriendly.

"Why did he ever come at all?" she said.

And so the days went by; summer changed to autumn, and autumn gave place to winter. For week after week one gale followed another. For days on end the spin-drift flew in clouds across the island, salt and unceasing.

The sea was never silent, the gulls flew inland and the cormorants sat storm-bound in their caves; brief glimpses of cold and sunny weather passed as abruptly as they came, and in the smoke of a driftwood fire Osla plied her needle and followed the wanderings of her thoughts.

During all these months the hermit spoke little. So engrossed was Osla in herself that she hardly noticed how seldom the cloud seemed to lift from his mind. Never as before did he talk with her at length, or instruct her from the curious scraps of knowledge his once acute mind had picked up from sources Christian and pagan, from the wise men of the North and the monasteries of southern lands. He never once alluded to their guest, never even apparently observed his departure, and in her heart his daughter thanked him for his silence.

The lingering winter passed at length, and one morning, in the first freshness of spring, Osla stood without the cell. Presently her father joined her, and she noticed, though her thoughts were busy elsewhere, that he wore a strange expression. He looked at her doubtfully, and then said,—

"Where is Vandrad? I would hear him sing."

Then Osla started, and her heart smote her.

"Vandrad, father?" she said gently. "He has been gone these eight months. Did you not know?"

The hermit seemed hardly to comprehend her words.

"Gone!" he repeated. "Why did you not tell me?"

"Surely you knew," she said.

"Why went he away? I would hear him sing. He used to sing to me of war. He sang last night. Last night," he repeated doubtfully; "methinks it was last night. Bring him to me."

She turned his questions as best she could, and strove to make him think of other things. With her arm through his they paced the turf along the shore, and all the while her heart sank lower and lower. She was in the presence of something so mysterious that even wise men in those days shrank from it in fear. It was the finger of God alone, they said, that laid a blight on human minds, and there before her was His handiwork.

Yet, had she but known it, this blight had been the slow work of years. Her father's mind, always dark and superstitious, and tinged with morbid melancholy, had gradually in these long solitary years given way more and more before sombre underminings, till now, with old age at the gates, it had at last succumbed. Some few bright moments there were at rare intervals, but in all the months that followed it was but the shattered hull of Thord the Tall, once the terror of the western seas, that lingered on the Holy Isle.

The care of him had at least the effect of turning Osla's thoughts away from herself. Than sunshine and another's troubles there are no better tonics.

Yet it was a dreary summer for the hermit's daughter, and it grew all the drearier and more lonesome when the long, fresh days began to shorten, and the sea was more seldom still and the wind more often high. All the time, the old man grew slowly worse. He sat continually in his cell; and though Osla would not acknowledge her fears even to herself, she knew that death could not be far away. Yet he lingered through the winter storms, and the end came upon a February evening. All the afternoon the hermit had lain with shut eyes, never speaking a word or giving a sign. It fell wet and gusty at night, and Osla, bending over the couch, could hear nothing but the wind and the roost she knew so well.

At length he raised his head and asked,—

"Are we alone, Osla?"

"There is no one here but me, father."

"Listen then," he said. "I have that on my mind that you must hear before I die. My end is close at hand. I seem to have been long asleep, and now I know that this wakefulness you see is but the clearness of a man before he dies."

He took her hand as he spoke, and she tried to stifle a sob.

"Not so," she said, while the tears rose so fast that she could only dimly see his face; "you are better, far better, to-night."

"I am death-doomed, Osla. Thord the Tall shall die in his bed to- night, an old and worthless wreck. Once I had little thought of such a death; and even now, though I die a Christian man, and my hope is in Christ Jesus, and St. Andaman the holy, I would like well to hear the clash of swords around me. But the doom of a man is fated from his birth."

His daughter was silent, and the old Viking, seeming to gather strength as he talked, went on in a strong, clear voice.

"I have heavy sins at my door. I have burned, I have slain in battle, I have pillaged towns and devastated corn-lands. May the Lord have mercy on my soul!

"He shall have mercy, Osla! I am saved, and the heathen I slew are lost for ever. For the souls of the Christians who fell by this hand I have done penance and given great gifts, and to-night these things shall be remembered. To-night we part, Osla."

She held his great hand in both of hers, and pressed it against her lips, and in a broken voice she said,—

"No, not to-night, not to-night."

"Ay, to-night," he said. "But before we part you must hear of one deed that haunts me even now, though they were but heathens whom I slew."

"The burning at Laxafiord?" she whispered.

"Who has not heard of that burning?" he cried. "The flames leapt higher than the pine trees, the women shrieked—I hear them now!" He paused, and she pressed his hand the tighter.

"Father!" she said softly, "father!" But he paid no heed to her, for his mind had begun to wander, and he talked wildly to himself.

"Death-doomed I am. Have mercy upon my soul! ......Ay, the wind blows, a stormy day for fishing, and the flames are leaping—I see them leap! St. Ringan save me!......A Christian man, I tell thee...... spare not, spare not! Smite them to the last man!"

Then he fell silent, and she laid her free hand upon his brow, while outside the wind eddied and sang mournfully round the cell. At last his mind cleared again, and he spoke coherently though very feebly.

"I am dying, Osla; fare thee well! The box—you know the box?"

"The steel-bound box?" she answered.

"Ay, steel-bound, 'tis steel-bound indeed. I took it—"

He had begun to wander again, but with a last effort he collected his thoughts and went on,—

"Open it. There is a writing. Read, it will tell—promise—I can speak no more."

"I promise," she replied, hardly knowing what she said, her heart was so full.

There was another brief silence, and then loudly and clearly he cried,—

"Bring up my banner! Forward, Thord's men! Forward!......They fly!......They fly!"

The voice died away, and Osla was left alone.



CHAPTER IX.

THE MESSAGE OF THE RUNES.

The story must now come back to Norway. Though Estein had returned with neither spoil nor captives, the tale of Liot's capture and the combat on the holm added much to his renown, and no fewer than six skalds composed lengthy poems on the adventure. There seemed no reason why the hero of these lays should shrink from talking of his expedition, and avoid, so far as he could, the company of men. Gradually strange rumours began to spread. Helgi, who alone knew the truth, held his peace for Estein's sake, even when the ale flowed most freely. The others who had sailed with them laid no such restraint on their tongues, and stories of a spell and an Orkney witch, vague and contradictory, but none the less eagerly listened to and often repeated, went the round of the country. The king at last began to take alarm, and one day he called Earl Sigvald to him and talked with him alone.

"What rede can you give, jarl?" he said; "a strange witchcraft I fear has been at work. When a young man smiles but seldom, broods often by himself, and shuns the flagon and the feast, there is something more to be looked for than a loss of men and ships, or the changefulness of youth."

"Get him a wife," replied the earl. "He has been single too long. There is no cure for spells like a pair of bright eyes."

But when the king spoke to his son, he found him resolutely opposed to marriage. Hakon loved him so dearly that he forbore to press the matter, and again he consulted Earl Sigvald.

"If he will not marry, let him fight," answered the earl. "For a prince of the race of Yngve, the clash of arms cures melancholy better than a maid."

So with the coming of spring Estein cruised in the Baltic, and carried the terror of his arms far into Finland and Russia. Yet he returned as moody as before.

At feasts his spirits sometimes rose to an extraordinary pitch. For the time he would be carried away as he had never been before. He would sing, jest, and quarrel; but his jests were often bitter, and his quarrels gave rise to more talk than his gloom, for before he had been of an even and generous temper. And when the fit passed away he was quieter than ever.

One day he was out hunting on the fells with Helgi. They were oftener together than ever, and his foster-brother had far more influence with him than any other man.

They stood on a desolate hillside a little above the highest pine woods, examining the tracks of a bear, when Helgi suddenly turned to him and said,—

"Do you not think, Estein, you have moped and mourned long enough?"

"They whom the gods have cursed," replied Estein, "have little cause for laughter. What is there left for me on this earth?"

"To prove yourself a man; to accept the destiny you cannot alter; and in time, Estein, to be a king. Are these things nothing?"

Helgi seldom spoke so gravely, and Estein for a time stood silent. Then he exclaimed,—

"You are right, Helgi; I have acted as a beaten child. Henceforth I shall try to look on my fate, I cannot say merrily, but at least with a steady eye."

As another winter passed, he gradually seemed to come to himself. He was sadder and more reserved than of yore, but the king saw with joy that the gloom was lifting. One day in the season when spring and winter overlap, and the snow melts by day and hardens again over-night, Earl Sigvald returned to Hakonstad from his seat by a northern fiord. King Hakon greeted him cheerfully.

"The spell is lifting, jarl," he said; "Estein is becoming himself again."

"That is well, sire," replied the earl; "and my old heart lightens at the news. But I have other tidings that need your attention. I have brought with me Arne the Slim, your scatt-gatherer in Jemtland. The people there have slain some of his followers, forced him to fly for his life, and refused to pay scatt to a Norse king. There is work ahead for some of our young blades."

"They shall see that my arm is longer than they deem," replied the king grimly.

Arne told his tale in the great hall before all the assembled chiefs, and the king's face darkened with anger as he listened. Every now and then, as he spoke of some particular act of treachery, or of his hardships and hurried flight, an angry murmur rose from his audience, and a weapon here and there clashed sternly. Estein alone seemed unmoved. He stood listlessly at the back, apparently hardly hearing what was going on, his thoughts returning despite himself to their melancholy groove. All at once he heard himself addressed, and turning round saw a stranger at his side. The man was holding out something towards him, and when he had caught Estein's eye, he said respectfully,—

"I was charged to give this token to you, sire." Estein looked at him in surprise, and taking the token from his hand, glanced at it curiously.

It was a stave of oak, about two feet long, and shaped with some care. Along one side an inscription was carved in Runes, and as he read the first words his expression changed and he spelt it keenly through. The whole writing ran: "An old man, a maiden, and a spell. Come hither to Jemtland."

He turned sharply to the man and asked,—

"How came you by this? Who sent it to me?"

"That last I cannot answer," replied the man. "This only I know, that the night before the Jemtland people attacked us, a man came to the door of the house where I lodged, and giving me this said, 'Fly, war is afoot,' and with that he left as suddenly as he came. I aroused my master Arne, and one or two more, and thanks to the warning, we escaped the fate of our comrades. That is all I can tell you."

The message made a sharp impression on Estein's mind. "An old man, a maiden, and a spell," he repeated to himself. He racked his brains, but he could think of no one in that remote country who would be likely to send such a message. It seemed to him to have an almost supernatural import, and again he said to himself, "An old man, a maiden, and a spell." Then suddenly he took a resolution, and turning from the messenger stepped into the crowd who surrounded the king.

Arne had just finished his tale. There was a moment's angry silence, and then the king glanced round the host of weather- beaten Vikings and high-born chiefs and cried,—

"Who will punish these cowardly rebels of mine?"

A dozen voices instantly claimed the service. Loudest of them all was that of Ketill, now married to a wealthy widow and a person of considerable importance, and the black-bearded Viking stepped forward as he spoke.

"Give me this service, king," he said. "I have lived at mine ease too long of late. Laziness begets fat."

There was a laugh at Ketill's words, for his person had never been noted for its spareness.

The Viking frowned and exclaimed,—

"Let those laugh who have tested my steel."

"Well I know your bravery, Ketill," began the king, "and there is no man—"

At that instant the ring of men round him suddenly opened and Estein stood before his father. His face was more animated than any had seen it for many a long day, and in a firm voice he said,- -

"I will lead this expedition."

Steel rang on steel as every armed warrior there clashed his approval. By all the gods whose names he could remember Earl Sigvald swore that the true Estein was come back, and King Hakon exclaimed joyfully,—

"There speaks my son at last. Prepare yourself then, Estein. Ill tidings have been changed to good."

"And you, Ketill," said Estein, turning to his former companion, "will you come with me?"

"That will I," answered Ketill. "I want no braver leader. But the gods curse me if we roast not a few score men this time, Estein."

For two days there was a turmoil of preparation round Hakonstad, and on the third Estein's two warships sailed down the fiord. He had with him Helgi, Ketill, and a picked force; and as he stood on deck and watched the towering precipices slip by, and the white clouds drift over their rough rim of pines, his heart beat high. The message of the Runes was ringing in his mind, and the spirit of roving and adventure boiling up again.

They sailed far up the coast, and then, leaving their ship in a northern fiord, struck inland across the mountains. The country they were going to lay among the lakes of North Sweden. Its people were more barbarous than the Norwegians, and had long been in a state of half-subjection to the Norse kings. There was not likely to be hard fighting; for small as Estein's force was, the natives were badly armed and little esteemed as warriors. The country, however, was difficult, so the men marched warily, their arms ready for instant use, and a sharp watch kept all the time. The sun came out hot by day, but at nights it felt very cold and frosty. With all the haste they could make they pushed on by the least frequented routes and the most desolate places. During the first day after they had crossed the mountains, they only saw one farmhouse, in a forest clearing, and that, when they came up to it, was still and deserted. On the following day they passed a small hamlet on the banks of a river, and a little later another farm. In neither was there a sign of an inhabitant to be seen, and they seemed for all the world like dwellings of the dead.

"This is passing strange," said Helgi. "Unless, perhaps, the Jemtlanders spend the winter in holes and caves, like the bears they resemble in all but courage."

"The alarm has spread, I fear," answered Estein. "We must make the more haste."

"Ay," said Ketill; "on, on!"

Towards evening the head of the column emerged into a small clearing, and the foster-brothers, who were marching in the middle, heard a cry from the van. Then Ketill's gruff voice called out,—

"After him! Nay, slay him not! Have you got him? Ay, bring the knave to Estein."

The little army came to a halt, and a poor-looking man, clad in a skin coat, and trembling violently as they dragged him along, was brought before Estein.

"Spare my life, noble captain!" he pleaded, casting himself on his knees. "I am but a poor man, I beseech you."

"Silence, rascal!" thundered Ketill, "or we will have your coward's tongue out by the root."

"Tell me, if you value your life, what means this solitude?" Estein demanded sternly. "Nay, shake not like an old man with palsy, but speak the truth—if by chance a Jemtlander knows what truth is. Where are the people?"

"Noble earl, they have heard of your coming, and fled. No man will await you; you will see none in the country."

"Do none mean to fight?" asked Helgi.

"Great prince," replied the fellow, "the Jemtlanders were never a warlike race. Even the king, I hear, is prepared to fly."

A contemptuous murmur rose from the Norsemen.

"Let us begin by hanging this man," said Ketill, "and then fire, fire through the country!"

"I shall see first whether he has spoken the truth," answered Estein. "Bind him, and bring him on."

The man was bound and guarded, and the march was continued. Early the next morning two men were found together in a cottage, and they told the same tale.

"Little glory is there in marching against such a people," said Estein. "Bind them, and hasten on."

About an hour later the little army emerged from a hillside forest, and saw below them a small merchant town. The rude wooden houses straggled along the edge of a great frozen lake, whose snow-powdered surface stretched for miles and miles in an unbroken sheet of dazzling whiteness. Between the shores and the outskirts of the woodlands lay a wide sweep of cultivated country. Everywhere a thin coating of snow covered the ground, and the air was sharp enough to make the breath of the men rise like a cloud of steam as they marched in battle order down the slope.

"There are men in the town!" cried Helgi suddenly. "I see the glint of the sun on weapons. Thanks be to the gods, we shall have a fight!"

"Ay, they are coming out," said Estein. "Halt! we shall take advantage of the slope, and await them here."

The men halted, and grasped their weapons, and in expectant silence their leaders watched a small troop defile out of the town.

"Call you that an army?" growled Ketill. "There are barely a score of them."

"Ay," said Helgi, with a sigh, "there will be no fighting to-day."

About twenty men, dressed in skins and fur coats and wooden helmets, and slenderly armed, had left the town, and now came slowly up the hill. Their leader alone wore a burnished steel helmet, and carried a long halberd over his shoulder. Immediately behind him walked two boys, and at the sight of them Helgi asked,- -

"What mean they by bringing boys against us?"

"Hostages," suggested Estein laconically.

When this motley company had come within a hundred yards of them, they stopped, and their leader advanced alone.

As he drew near to the Norsemen, Estein stepped out a pace or two to meet him, but they stood so close that Helgi and Ketill could hear all that passed. They saw that the stranger was a tall, elderly man with a clever face and a dignified bearing.

"Hail, Estein Hakonson!" he said.

"You know my name, it seems," replied Estein, "and therein have the advantage of me."

"My name is Thorar," said the chief, speaking gravely and very courteously, "lawman of this region of Jemtland"—he made a sweeping gesture with his hand as he said this—"and a friend hitherto to the Northmen."

"I know you by repute as a chief of high birth, and one who has long been faithful to my father. Yet, methinks, it was something less than faithful to drive his scatt-gatherer from the country and slay his followers."

"Blame not me for that, Estein," answered Thorar. "It was done with neither my knowledge nor consent, and none grieved at such an outrage more than I. Now, as you see, you have the land at your mercy; and as an ancient friend of your family and a faithful servant of my master King Bue, I am come to intercede between King Hakon and him. Give us peace, Estein; and as you have a grey- haired father, spare my master the sorrow and the shame you would bring upon him. What can he do against you? The old spirit of my countrymen has died out," he added sadly, "and no man dare meet your force in the field."

"Is King Bue in the town?" Estein asked.

"Nay, he could not travel so far; but in his name I bid you welcome to his feast, if you will accept peace instead of war. If you will not, then I can only mourn the devastation of my country. It will be a bloodless victory, Estein."

"And what compensation does the king intend to make?"

"What you will; he is powerless."

"Shall we then march to King Bue?"

"Alas!" said Thorar, "in these evil days he cannot entertain you all. Many of his people have fled to the woods already, and—to tell the truth—he, too, would feel ill at ease if he saw so brave a force come nigh him; for he is old, and his spirit is broken. But a following of twenty men or so he will gladly entertain. The others I shall have feasted here in the town at my own cost, and with them I shall leave my two young sons"—he indicated, as he spoke, the two lads. "They are my only children, and them I shall willingly give you as hostages till your return, that I may save my country from fire and sword. Though," he added, with a grave smile, "if men speak truth, Estein Hakonson can make good his coming or going against most."

"Be it as you will," replied Estein; "but if—" He paused, and looked sternly at Thorar.

"If a king's word and mine are not sufficient, and my only sons satisfy you not, I can but add my oath—though most men would deem it needless."

Thorar spoke with dignity and a touch of haughtiness, and Estein replied simply and courteously,—

"I shall come."

He turned to Helgi and said,—

"No fighting will there be, Helgi; but I have known you welcome even a feast. What say you?"

"This snow work and marching call for feasting," replied Helgi, with a laugh.

"Then Ketill shall stay here with the rest of our troop, and you and I, with twenty more, will to the king. Forward, men!"

"Spare not the ale," added Ketill.

"A courteous and gallant man is Thorar, for a Jemtlander," said Helgi to Ketill, as they marched down to the town.

"Dogs and women are his people," replied Ketill. "They are fit neither to be friends nor enemies."

Estein liberated the prisoners they had taken on the march, and leaving Ketill in charge of the main force and the hostages, he and Helgi set forth about noon for the seat of King Bue.



CHAPTER X.

KING BUE'S FEAST.

Their way at first took them over a flat, white waste by the shores of the lake. Estein fell back and let Helgi walk in front with Thorar; behind those two marched the small band of wild, skin-coated followers of the lawman; and after them came the mail- clad twenty, the shields which hung from their backs clanking now and again as they struck their harness. Last of all walked their leader.

Now that the tension of forced marches and weary journeyings through forest paths was off his mind, his thoughts ran continually on the Runes. "Come hither to Jemtland," he said to himself. He had come, and what was to follow? Something he felt must happen, and though he was curious, he cared singularly little what it might be. The sun hung high overhead, under foot the snow crunched pleasantly, and the air was clear and bracing—a day to inspire an adventurer and a skald. His thoughts began to take a rhyming turn, and he caught himself repeating his own verses:—

"Fare thee well, sweet blue-eyed Osla! The sea-king must not stay, E'en for tresses rich as summer And for smile as bright as May; But one hope I cannot part from— We may meet again some day!"

"And we shall, Osla!" he exclaimed half aloud.

He was aroused by hearing the voices of Helgi and Thorar come back to him clear and cheerfully. A thought struck him. Could Thorar have sent the message? A moment's reflection assured him that it was out of the question, but, to convince himself, he went forward and joined the lawman.

"Is it far to King Bue's hall?" he asked.

"The marshes are firm and frozen, and the snow lies nowhere very deep. We should reach it by nightfall."

Helgi laughed, and said,—

"A flight of wild ducks passed overhead just now, and called to mind their kinsmen cooked; their kinsmen cooked called to mind the wherewithal to wash them down; and, in brief, I, for one, shall be glad to meet King Bue."

"We have a saying that the king loves a guest who loves his cheer," replied Thorar with a smile.

"Know you one of an old man," Estein asked, "and—but I forget it- -something of a maiden too? I saw it somewhere written in Runes."

In obedience to an indefinable instinct, he had said nothing of the token to Helgi, and his foster-brother looked at him in surprise. The mention of the Runes brought no look of recognition to Thorar's face. With his grave smile he answered,—

"There are many sayings concerning maids, and some concerning old men; also, if I mistake not, one or two about young men and maids."

"Spare Estein those last," cried Helgi lightly. "He thinks himself old, and never gives maids a thought at all."

Evidently Thorar knew nothing of the message, and Estein became silent again.

They were gradually approaching a dark forest, which stretched from the edge of the lake inland, and latish in the afternoon they entered it by a narrow, rutty road. Darkness closed in fast as they wound their way through the wood. The air grew colder and colder, till their hands and faces tingled with the frost. Silence fell upon them, and for some time nothing could be heard but the occasional clash of steel and the continual creaking of snow and breaking of dead branches under foot. Then a hum of voices came to them fitfully, and at last the path opened into a wide glade.

"We are almost there," said Thorar. "Smile not, Estein, at our rude hospitality; or, if you do, let our welcome make amends."

A young moon had just risen above the trees, and by its pale light they saw a small village at the end of the glade. Many lights flashed, and a babel of voices chattered and shouted as they approached.

"All King Bue's men have not fled, it seems," Helgi said in a low voice.

Estein made no reply, but the two foster-brothers fell back, and placing themselves at the head of their twenty followers, entered the little village. They found that it consisted of a few mean houses clustered outside a high wooden stockade. Thorar led them up to a gateway in this fence, and crying, "Welcome, Estein!" stood aside to let the Norsemen file in.

The scene as they entered was strange and stirring. Immediately before them lay a wide courtyard, in the centre of which stood King Bue's hall, high and long, and studded with bright windows. Men were ranged in a line from the gateway to the hall, bearing great torches. The smoky flames flashed on snow-covered ground and wild faces, and the branches of black pines outside, making the night above seem dark as a great vault. All round them rose a clamour of voices, and a throng of skin-coated figures crowded the gate to catch a glimpse of the strangers.

Estein walked first, and just as he came into the court a man, pushed apparently by the surging crowd, stumbled against him.

"Make way, there!" cried Thorar sternly, from behind; "give room for the king's guests to pass!"

The man hastily stepped back, but not before he had found time to whisper,—

"Beware, Estein! Drink not too deep!"

As he walked along the line of torch-bearers to the door of the king's hall, the peril of their situation, supposing treachery were really intended, came suddenly home to Estein's mind. It was too late to turn back, even had his pride allowed him to think of taking such a course. He could only resolve to warn his men, and, so far as he could, keep them together and near him. Even as he was still turning the matter over in his mind, he found himself at the hall door, where an officer of the court, dressed with barbaric splendour, ushered him into the drinking-room. A discordant chorus of outlandish voices, raised by a hundred guests or more, bade him welcome. He walked up to his seat by the king, and on the spur of the moment could hit on no plan of communicating with his men. Helgi followed him to the dais, and with him he just found time to exchange a word.

"Drink little, and watch!" he whispered.

"Have you then seen him too?" Helgi replied, in the same anxious tone. Estein looked at him in surprise, and Helgi, coming close beside him, added rapidly,—

"The last torch-bearer but one was the man we captured in the forest and freed this morning, and methinks I see another of our prisoners even now. King Bue's hird-men [Footnote: Bodyguard.] both, sent—" he had to turn away abruptly, and Estein finished the sentence under his breath,—

"Sent to trap us."

He took his seat, and glancing round the hall saw his twenty followers scattered here and there among the crowd of guests.

"Fool!" he thought, "I have walked into the trap like a child in arms. The whole country has been prepared against our coming, the people told to leave their houses, and the king's own hird-men set as decoys in our path. Can this be the meaning of the Runes?"

Yet there was no actual proof of treachery, and he could only watch and listen. And certainly there was noise enough to be heard. Never among the most hardened drinkers of their own country had the foster-brothers seen such an orgie. The king, a foolish- looking old man, evidently completely under Thorar's influence, became very soon in a maudlin condition; man after man around them grew rapidly more and more drunk; and all the time they themselves were plied with ale so assiduously that their suspicions grew stronger. So far as his followers were concerned, Estein was helpless. He glanced round the hall now and then, and could see them quickly succumbing to the Jemtland hospitality. Personally he found it hard to refuse to pledge the frequent toasts shouted at him, but at last, when the men near him had got in such a state that their observation was dulled, he placed his drinking-horn on his lap and thrust his dagger through the bottom. Then, by keeping it always off the table, he was able to let the liquor run through as fast as it was filled, and always drain an empty cup. Helgi had adopted a different device. His head lay on his arms, and in reply to all calls to drink he merely uttered incoherent shouts, while every now and then Estein could see that he would shake with laughter.

Suspicious though he was, it came as a shock to Estein to hear his worst fears suddenly confirmed. Tongues had been freely loosed, and listening carefully to what was said, he heard the mutterings of the chief next him take a coherent form.

"Ay, little they know," he was saying to himself. "Let them drink, let them drink. Dogs of Norsemen, they came hither to harry our country, and here they shall stay. Ay, they shall never drink again, and King Hakon shall look for his son in vain."

Then the man lost his balance, and rolled off his seat under the board. He had been placed between Estein and Helgi, and now Estein was able to lean over to his foster-brother, and, under pretence of trying to make him drink, whispered in his ear,—

"Go out by the far door, and await me outside the court on the farthest side from the entrance."

Helgi lay still for a minute, and then rising to his feet, muttered something about "strong ale and fresh air," and staggered down the hall with a well-feigned semblance of drunkenness.

Thorar was sitting opposite, touched with drink a little, but still alert and sober enough. He glanced sharply at Estein; but the Viking, looking him full in the face, laughed noisily and cried,—

"Helgi's head seems hardly so strong as his hand, Thorar!"

For once the lawman was overreached, and with a laugh he drained his horn and answered,—

"I had thought better of you Norsemen."

The hardest part of the business now remained. To go out in the same way he knew would excite suspicion; if he delayed too long, search would be made for Helgi; and there sat Thorar facing him. He knew that if he could once get rid of him, he had little to fear from any of the others; and as he thought hard for a plan, the king, who had for some time been fast asleep, suddenly solved the difficulty. He woke with a start, saw that the drink was coming to an end, and cried with drunken ardour,—

"More ale, more ale, Thorar! Estein drinks not!"

Thorar glanced round and saw that no one but himself was capable of going on the errand. Twice he called aloud on servants by their names, but there came no answer. Then with a frown he rose and walked down the hall.

The high table at which they sat was lit by two great torches set on stands. While Thorar was still going down the room, Estein, with a deliberately clumsy movement, upset and extinguished the one nearest him. Casting a look over his shoulder, he saw the lawman leave the hall at the far end; and then he rose to his feet, and making an affectation of relighting the extinguished torch from the other, put the second out, and in the sudden half- darkness that ensued, slipped under the board, and ran on his hands and feet for the door at that end of the hall. No one about seemed to notice his departure, but just as he carefully opened the door he thought he saw with the corner of his eye a man slip out at the far end.



CHAPTER XI.

THE HOUSE IN THE FOREST.

Coming from the warmth and light of the hall, the night outside struck sharp and bitterly cold. A thin cloud hid the moon, but there was quite light enough to see that the snow-covered court was deserted. Only in the shadows of the paling and the end of the house was it possible for a man to be concealed, and before he stepped away from the door Estein ran his eye carefully along both. He could see nothing, and had just stepped forward a pace, when noiselessly as a phantom a dark form appeared round the corner of the hall, and without pausing an instant came straight up to him. He saw only that the man was small, and wrapped in a cloak of fur; his sword flashed, and he was almost in the act of striking when the figure held up a hand and stopped.

"Who art thou?" said Estein in a low voice, coming forward a step as he spoke, and holding his sword ready to smite on the instant.

"Estein Hakonson," replied the other in the same tone, "waste not your blows on friends. Remember the Runes, and follow me. There is little time for words now."

He turned as he spoke, and looking over his shoulder to see that Estein followed him, started for the stockade. For an instant Estein hesitated.

"Are you mad?" exclaimed the man; "or do you wish to die here like a dog?"

"Lead on," replied Estein, and still holding his naked sword he followed him across the court.

The man went swiftly up to the paling, and taking an axe from under his cloak drove it hard into the wood as high above his head as he could reach. Then with the agility of a cat he drew himself up by it, seized the top of the fence, and sat there astride.

"Quick! quick!" he whispered. "Sheathe that sword, and stand not like a fool looking at me."

Estein, though a much heavier man, was active and lithe, and his guide, as he watched him mount, muttered,—

"That is better; we have a chance yet."

They dropped on the other side, and whispering to Estein to follow, the man turned to the wood and was about to plunge in, when his companion seized his arm, and said,—

"I trysted here with my foster brother. Till he comes I must wait."

The Jemtlander turned on him savagely and answered,—

"Think you I have to succour you of my own pleasure? Never had I less joy in doing anything. If your brother be not here now he will never come at all. I was not told to risk my life for him. Come on!"

"Go, then," said Estein; "here will I bide."

The man stamped his foot wrathfully, and turned sharply away as though he would leave him. Then he turned back and answered,—

"The gods curse you and him! See you this path opening ahead of us? Follow that with all the speed you can make, and I, fool that I am for my pains, shall turn back and bring him after you if he is to be found. Stare not at me, but hasten! I shall overtake you ere long."

With that he started off under the shadow of the stockade, and Estein, after a moment's deliberation, turned into the path. Never before had he felt himself so completely the football of fortune. Destiny seemed to kick him here and there in no gentle manner, and to no purpose that he could fathom. As he stumbled through the blackness of the tortuous forest path, he tried to connect one thing with another, and find some meaning in the token that had brought him here. Evidently the sender was so far from being in league with his foes that he made a kind of contrary current, eddying him one way just when fate seemed to have driven him another. To add to his perplexities, the disappearance of Helgi had now come to trouble his mind; he had heard no outcry or alarm, his foster-brother had time enough to have easily reached the rendezvous before him, and he felt as he walked like a man in a maze.

Suddenly there came a crash of branches at his side, a man stepped out of the trees, and before he had time to draw a weapon, the sharp, impatient voice of his guide exclaimed,—

"Is this all the way you have made? Your foster-brother has escaped, or has by this time been captured, I care not which. I saw him not."

"But supposing I were more careful of his safety?" Estein demanded, with a note of anger in his voice.

"Push on!" replied the other. "The alarm is raised, and neither you nor Helgi can be found, so perchance he has not yet suffered for his folly. I came not out to hear you talk."

He started off as he spoke, and Estein, perceiving the hopelessness of further search, followed him with a heart little lightened.

"If they have not found him yet," he thought, "he has perhaps escaped. But why did he not wait for me? If he had been alive, he surely would have met me."

For some time he followed his mysterious guide in melancholy silence. There was only room for them to walk in single file, and it took him some trouble to keep up. Sometimes it seemed to him that they would leave the path and go straight through the trackless depths of the wood, with a quickness and assurance that astonished him. Then again they would apparently fall upon a path for a time, and perhaps break into a trot while the ground was clear.

At last they came into a long, open glade, where a stream brawled between snow-clad banks, and the vague form of some frightened animal flitted silently towards the shade. The moon had come out of the clouds, and by its light Estein tried to scan the features of his companion. So far as a fur cap would let his face be seen, he seemed dark, unkempt, and singularly wild of aspect, but there was nothing in his look to catch the Viking's memory. He said not a word, but, with a swinging stride, hastened down the glade, Estein close at his shoulder.

"Where do we go?" Estein asked once.

"You shall see what you shall see. Waste not your breath," replied the other impatiently.

Again they turned into the wood, and went for some considerable distance down a choked and rugged path which all at once ended in a clearing. In the middle stood a small house of wood. The frosted roof sparkled in the moonlight, and a thin stream of smoke rose from a wide chimney at one end, but there was never a ray of light from door or window to be seen. The man went straight up to the door and knocked.

"This then is the end of our walk," said Estein.

"It would seem so indeed," replied the other, striking the door again impatiently.

This time there came sounds of a bolt being shot back. Then the door swung open, and Estein saw on the threshold an old man holding in his hand a lighted torch. For an instant there passed through his mind, like a prospect shown by a flash of lightning, a sharp memory of the hermit Andreas. Instinctively he drew back, but the first words spoken dispelled the thought.

"I have waited for thee, Estein."

"Atli!" he exclaimed.

"Ay," said the old man. "I see thou knewest not where thy way would lead thee. But enter, Estein, if indeed after a king's feast thou wilt deign to receive my welcome."

He added the last words with a touch of irony that hardly tended to propitiate his guest.

"I have to thank you, methinks," replied Estein, as he entered, "for bringing me to that same banquet."

He found himself in a room that seemed to occupy most of the small house. One half of it was covered with a wooden ceiling which served as the floor of a loft, while for the rest of the way there was nothing beneath the sloping rafters of the roof. A ladder reached from the floor to the loft, and at one end, that nearest the outer door, a fire of logs burned brightly.

All round the walls hung the skins of many bears and wolves, with here and there a spear or a bow.

Atli left the other man to close the door, and followed Estein up to the fire.

He replied, either not noticing or disregarding the dryness of Estein's retort,—

"I knew well, Estein, thou wouldst come. Something told me thou wouldst not linger on my summons."

"Did you then send for me to lead me into this snare?" said Estein, his brows knitting darkly.

"Does one eagle betray another to the kites and crows?" replied the old man loftily.

Estein burst out hotly,—

"Speak plainly, old man! Keep mysteries for Rune-carved staves and kindred tricks. What mean this message and this plot and this rescue? I have left my truest friend and twenty stout followers besides in yonder hall. I myself have had to flee for my life from a yelping pack of Jemtland dogs; and for aught I know, Ketill and the rest of my force may be drugged with drink and burned in their beds even while I talk with you. Give me some plain answer?"

Atli looked at him for a minute, and then replied gravely,—

"I have heard, indeed, that some strange change had befallen Estein Hakonson. There was a time when he who had just saved thy life would have had fairer thanks than this."

With a strong effort Estein controlled his temper and answered more quietly,—

"You are right. It was another Estein whom you saw before. Bear with me, and go on."

He sat down on a bench as he spoke and gazed into the fire.

"The gods indeed have dealt heavily with thee," said Atli, "and it is at their bidding that I called thee here."

"Spoke they with King Bue also?" said Estein, with a slight curl of his lip, looking all the time at the fire.

"Nay; hear me out, Estein. I knew that King Hakon would send, ere long, an avenging force to Jemtland."

"He was never the man to forgive an injury," he added, apparently to himself.

"So, as thou knowest, I sent that token to thee. Then unquiet rumours reached mine ears; for though I live apart from men here in this forest, little passes in the country—ay, and in Norway too—that comes not to Atli's knowledge. I learned of the plot to treacherously entrap thy force, and though I have long lived out of Norway my Norse blood boiled within me."

"Could you not have warned us sooner?" said Estein.

"Thorar kept his plans secret so long that it was too late to do aught save what I have done. I sent Jomar to the feast, as thou knowest."

Estein's guide had been sitting before the fire, consuming a supper of cold meat, and paying little heed to the talk, but at the last words he rose, and throwing the bones on to the flames, said,—

"It was by no will of mine; I bear no love to the Norsemen."

"Peace!" exclaimed Atli sternly. "Art thou too ungrateful for what I have done for thee, and fearless of what I can do?"

"Babble on with this Norseman. I am tired," replied Jomar, and leaving the fire, he rolled himself in a bear-skin, lay down on the floor, and in a trice was fast asleep.

"Say now to me, Estein," continued the old man, "that thou holdest me guiltless of all blame."

"Of all, save the snatching of me away from the fate of Helgi," replied Estein sadly. "Yet I remember that you yourself said that our ends should not be far apart, so I think you have but delayed my death a little while."

"Nay, rather," cried Atli enthusiastically, "believe that Helgi lives since thy life is safe! I tell thee, Estein, many fair years lie before thee. By my mouth, even by old Atli, the gods send a message to thee!"

His exalted tone, the animation of his face, and the flash of his pale eyes, impressed Estein strongly.

"By you?" he inquired with some wonder; "what then have you to do with me?"

With the same ringing voice the old man went on,—

"Even as over the windows of this poor house there hang those skins, so over my life hangs a curtain which may not yet be fully lifted—perchance the fates may decree that it shall ever hide me. A little, however, I may venture to raise it. Listen, Estein!"



CHAPTER XII.

THE MAGICIAN.

As he said the last words Atli stooped, and lifting two large logs cast them on the fire. For a minute he watched them crackle and spit sparks, bending his brows as he deliberated how he should begin.

Then he turned to Estein and said,—

"When I saw thee by the shore at Hernersfiord, now some two years gone, didst thou think then that Atli was a stranger?"

"I thought so indeed," replied Estein, "though some words you let fall pointed otherwise."

"Yet, Estein," the old man said, "when thou wert no higher than that bench whereon thou sittest, I dandled thee in mine arms, and those fingers that now clasp a sword hilt, and, if men say true, clasp it right firmly, played once with my beard. Less snow had fallen on it then, Estein. Thou canst not remember me?"

Estein looked at him closely before replying.

"Nay, Atli, my memory carries me not so far back."

"So it was," Atli continued; "but chiefly was I the friend of thine ill-fated brother Olaf."

"Of Olaf?" exclaimed Estein, with a slight start.

"Ay, of Olaf. Often have I fought by his side on sea and shore, and dearly, more dearly than I ever loved man or woman since, I loved the youth. Thou even as a child wert strangely like him in features, and as I look upon thee now, there comes back memories of blither days. Wonder not then that I long was fain to see thee."

"Then why came you not to my father's house?" said Estein. "A friend of his son's would ever be welcome."

"Thy father and I fell out," replied Atli, "the wherefore I must still keep behind the shrouding-curtain, but for my present purpose it matters little. I could not visit Hakonstad; I could not even stay in the land of my birth. Olaf fell."

His voice trembled a little, and he paused. Estein said nothing, but waited for him to go on. Then in a brisker tone he continued,- -

"For some years I sailed the west seas; but I was growing old and my strength was wearing away with the wet work and the fighting, so I hied me home again."

"And my father?" asked Estein. "Knew not of my coming," Atli replied. "Of friends and kinsmen I had few left in the land, but I had long had other thoughts for myself than the tilling of fields and the emptying of horns at Yule. Often at night had I sat out. [Footnote: To "sit out" was a method of reading the future practised by sorcerers, in which the magician spent the night under the open sky, and summoned the dead to converse with him.] I had read the stars, and talked with divers magicians and men skilled in the wisdom of things unseen. I wandered for long among the Finns, I dwelt with the Lapps, and learned the lore of those folks. Then I came to Jemtland, where cunning men were said to live."

"Cunning!" exclaimed Estein furiously; "treacherous hounds call them."

"Cunning, indeed, they are," said the old man, "but not wise. This Jomar here is held a spaeman by the people."

He glanced contemptuously at the sleeping figure on the floor.

"Since I came," he went on, "I have taught him more than he could have learned in a lifetime here and now, as thou hast seen, he fears and obeys me as a master. With him I took up my abode, living in a spot known only to few. Yet my thoughts turned continually to Norway, and chiefly flew to thee, Estein. I dreamt of thee often, and at last a voice"—his own sank almost to a whisper as he spoke—"a voice bade me seek thee. How I fared thou knowest."

"I would that I had given more heed to your warning," said Estein gloomily.

"It all came true then?" cried Atli. "Nay, there is no need to answer. Truth I tell, and truth must happen."

"Have you, then, further rede to give me?"

"Ay, I have heard of this spell and the sore change that has befallen thee, and in my dreams and outsittings I have seen many things—an old man habited in a strange garb, and a maid by his side. Ha! flew the shaft true?"

So carried away was Estein by the seer's earnestness, and so suddenly did his last words strike home, that the thought never occurred to him that this might only be the gossip of his followers come in time to Atli's ears. It seemed to him an inspired insight into his past, and he started suddenly, and then said slowly,—

"The shaft indeed flew true."

"For thy brother's sake I owe thee something," the old man went on; "I might give weighty reason, but I may not. For thine own I wish to heal thee, and if I cannot cure this spell there is no man who can.

"Wilt thou trust me with the story?" he added, a little dubiously.

"Ask not that of me," replied Estein. "Tell me what to do, and I promise I shall follow the rede."

As if afraid that to ask further questions might weaken the force of his words, Atli fell at once into his mystic manner again.

"For long I wrestled with the visions. The faces of the wizard and the witch" (Estein's look darkened for an instant), "I could not see, but at last, in the still night-time, there spoke a voice to me, and I knew it came from the gods. For three nights it spoke. On the fourth I sat out, and called to me from far beyond the mountains and the lakes, even from beyond the grave, thy brother Olaf. He too spoke to me, and every time the purport of the message was the same."

"What said the voice?"

"A ship must cross the seas again."

The old man repeated the last words low and slowly, and then, for a little, silence fell upon the pair. Vague and meagre though the message was, it accorded exactly with Estein's long-suppressed desires. So entirely did Atli believe in himself and the virtue of his counsel, that the young Viking was thoroughly infected with his faith; and then, too, it was that early and suggestive hour when a man is quickly stirred.

Estein was the first to speak.

"I accept the counsel, Atli," he cried, springing to his feet. "With the melting of the snow I shall take to the sea again, and steer for the setting of the sun."

The old seer laid his hand affectionately upon his shoulder.

"There spoke the brother of Olaf," he said. "And now to sleep. In the morning I shall send Jomar to warn Ketill, so trouble not thyself further."

"If I but knew Helgi's fate," Estein began.

"Doubt not my words," said Atli. "His fate is too closely linked with thine."

He showed the Viking to a pallet bed in the loft, where, worn out with fatigue and anxiety, he quickly fell asleep.

It was nearly noon when he awoke, and the sun was streaming through the attic window. He found Atli in the room below.

"I have turned sluggard, it seems," he said.

"Young heads need sleep," replied the old man. "There was no need to rise before, or I should have roused thee. Jomar has been gone since daybreak, and till he returns thou canst do naught."

"Naught?" said Estein. "Have I not got my foster-brother to seek for? Give me but a meal to carry me till nightfall and I will away."

At first the old man endeavoured to dissuade him, but finding he was obdurate, he finally gave him a cap and coat of wolf-skin to be worn over his mail lest he should be seen by any natives, a good bow and arrows, and copious but perplexing directions regarding the forest paths. As he sallied forth, and followed the track by which he had come the night before, his plans were vague enough. To make for King Bue's hall, and, taking advantage of the woods that covered all the country, spy out what might be seen, was the hazardous scheme he proposed. Perhaps, he thought, Helgi might be wandering the country too, and if fate was kind they might meet. In any case he could not rest in his state of uncertainty, and he pushed boldly on. He smiled as he glanced at his garb: the long wolf-skin coat reached almost to his knees, over his legs he had drawn thick-knitted hose to keep out the cold, his helmet was hidden by the furry cap, and the only part of his original equipment to be seen were the sword girt round his waist and the long shield that hung upon his back. He had been in two minds about taking this last, but ere the day was done he had reason to congratulate himself that it was with him.

Before long he struck the open glade they had gone down by moonlight, and following it to the end, he found, after a little search, the opening of another path. This at last divided into two divergent tracks, and he had to confess himself completely puzzled.

"I seem to be the plaything of fate," he exclaimed, after he had tried in vain to recall Atli's directions; "let fate decide, life is but made up of the castings of a die," and with that he threw his dagger into the air, crying, "Point right, haft left!" It landed on its point and sunk almost out of sight in the snow. "Right let it be then," he said, and turned down the right-hand path.

It had been so dark and their flight so hurried that nothing remained in his memory of the night before, to show him whither the way was leading. He only knew that he had wandered for some time, when a prospect of white, open country began to show in peeps through the trees ahead. Presently he came to the edge of the forest, and saw that the cast of his dagger had led him wide of his mark. A long stretch of treeless country opened out before him, getting wider and wider in the distance. Near at hand a narrow lake began, and stretched for a mile or two down the snow- fields, and, like the greater lake they had passed, it was frozen and shining white. Less than a hundred yards from him, between the forest and the water, there lay a small village. A number of men stood about among the houses, and from their movements and the presence of two or three sledges he judged that a party must either have lately arrived, or be on the point of departing. As nothing further seemed to happen, he made up his mind that they must be arrivals; and then, seeing little to be gained by waiting further, he was about to retrace his steps when his attention was arrested by the appearance of two women. They came out of a house, and one, the taller of the two, went up to a group of men standing near, while the other, who looked like a peasant's wife, hung behind. The look of the first figure caught Estein's eye at once, and he felt his heart suddenly beat quickly. He could only see her back as she talked with the men, but every gesture she made, slight though they were, brought sharply and clearly before his mind memories of the Holy Isle.

"By the hammer of Thor and the horse of Odin, this country is surely bewitched," he muttered. His fancy, he told himself, was playing him a pleasant trick: he had seen Osla so continually in his mind's eye, that this girl, for girl she seemed, shaped herself after his thoughts. That it could be she he loved, there in the flesh, was almost laughably impossible; yet as she talked, apparently with an air of some authority, to the men beside her, the resemblance became at moments stronger, and then again he would say to himself, "Nay, that is not like her." As the men gesticulated and answered her their voices came to him indistinctly, while hers, strain his hearing as he might, he could not catch. There seemed to be a dispute about something which the whole party were engrossed in, when suddenly one man gave a cry and pointed at Estein. Then he saw that in his curiosity he had stepped outside the shelter of the wood and stood in a space between the trees.

At the man's cry they all looked round, and he saw the girl's face.

"It is she or her spirit," he exclaimed.

Instinctively he stepped behind a tree, and at this sign of flight there was a shout from the men. One shot an arrow, which passed harmlessly to the side, and then they all came at him. He had only time to see that more villagers were coming out of the houses, and that the girl had turned away to join the other woman, when his wits came back to him, and turning into the path he set off as fast as he could put his feet to the ground.

For a time the chase was hot: he could hear the men scattering so as to cover the wood behind him, and once or twice the leaders seemed near. Estein was fleet of foot, however, and the wood so dense that it was hard to follow a man for far, and at last the sound of his pursuers died away, and he felt that, for the time at least, he was safe. But he had long left the path, and there was nothing to guide him save glimpses of the sinking sun, the ice that showed the north side of twigs and stems, and in more open spaces the lie of the branches to the prevalent wind. And as he wandered on, his mind hardly grasped the bearing and significance of forest clues. Twenty times, at least, he dismissed the resemblance he had seen as the work of fancy. The girl had been too far off to read her features, her figure was not really like, and, most weighty argument, it was out of all reason that she should be in this land of forests, so distant from her island home. Still each time he dismissed it the resemblance came back fresh and strong, to be sent away again. He had lost all idea of where he was, and the sun had already set, when more by good luck than by good guidance, the trees grew thinner in front, and he found himself once more in the glade of the stream.



CHAPTER XIII.

ARROW AND SHIELD.

It seemed strangely still and fresh in the open glade. The blood- red glamour of a frosty sunset was fading from the sky as the daylight died away; all round the wood was populous with shadows; and over its ragged edge the moon hung pale and faint.

Estein walked down a little way, and then stopped and listened. He could hear the stream rumbling over the stones, but not another sound. Then the far-off howl of a wolf struck dismally on his ear. Twice it sounded and passed away, leaving the silence more intense, while all the time the air grew colder. All at once a dead branch snapped sharply. Estein looked round keenly, but in the dusk of the pine stems his eye could pick out nothing. For a minute everything was still, and then a twig cracked again. This time he could see plainly a man come from behind a tree and stand in the outskirts of the wood. For a minute they stood looking at each other. The man, so far as he could discern in the waning light, wore the native skin coat and cap, and seemed to hold in his hands a bow ready to shoot.

Estein quietly drew an arrow from his quiver and laid it on his bow. Just as he cast his eye down to fit the notch to the string, there was a twang from the wood; an arrow whizzed, and stuck hard in his fur cap, stopping only at the steel of his helmet.

"This archer will deem my fur is of singular proof," he said to himself, with the flicker of a smile, as he let a shaft fly in return. He could see his foe move to one side, and heard his arrow strike a branch. Instantly the man fired again, and this time struck him on the breast, and the arrow, checked by the ring-mail beneath, hung from his wolf-skin coat.

He smiled to himself again, and thought, "Never, surely, has that bowman shot at so stout a garment. Yet he shoots hard and straight. I wish not to meet with a stronger archer, and could do well with a worse one now." And with that he took his shield from his back.

His situation was indeed far from safe, and he had to come to some instant decision. Standing in the open against the snow, he offered a fair mark, while his opponent among the trees was hard to see and harder to hit. To try to rush so good an archer, though risky, would certainly have been his scheme, had he not strongly suspected that this one man was set as a decoy to tempt him into an ambush. His blood was up, and he vowed that run he would not at any cost; and, in fact, flight was far from easy, for behind him lay the stream, and in crossing he must expose himself.

It took him but a moment to turn the alternatives over in his mind, and then he suddenly hit upon a plan. His shield was one of the long, heart-shaped kind, coming to a point at the lower end, and covering him down to the knee as he stood upright. He raised it high, and driving the point hard into the ground, dropped on one knee behind it. As he stooped a third arrow sang close above his head and sped into the gloaming. Leaning to one side he fired again, and an instant later a fourth shaft rang on his shield. Then came a brief pause in the hostilities, and, looking round the edge of his fort, Estein could see his foe standing motionless close under a tree. He soon tired of waiting, however, and presently an arrow, aimed evidently at what he could see of Estein's legs, passed within six inches of one knee and buried itself in the snow beside him.

"He shoots too well," muttered Estein. "If this goes on I must try a desperate ruse. I shall have one other shot."

He rose almost to his full height, fired his arrow, and quickly stooped again. His enemy was evidently on the watch for such an opening, for the two bowstrings twanged together, and while Estein's shaft struck something with a soft thud, the other hit the Viking hard on the headpiece.

Throwing up his arms, he reeled and fell flat upon his back. Yet, as he lay for all the world like a man struck dead, a smile stole over his face, and he quietly and gently drew his sword.

"Can my shaft have gone home?" he wondered. Apparently not, for his foeman left the shelter of the wood, and he could see him walk slowly across the open. He was clad in a loose and almost grotesquely ill-fitting garment, seemingly of sheep-skin, and held an arrow on his bow ready to shoot on a sign of movement. When he had come within ten or fifteen yards, he suddenly dropped his bow, drew his sword, and stepped quickly forward. At the same instant Estein jumped to his feet, and with a shout sprang at him. The blades were on the point of crossing, when his enemy stopped short, dropped his point, and then burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

"Estein, by the beard of Thor!" he gasped.

"Helgi!" cried his quondam foe.

They looked each other in the face for an instant, and then simultaneously broke out into another fit of mirth.

"By my faith, Estein, that was a plan worthy of yourself!" cried Helgi. "But 'tis lucky I fired not at you on the ground, as I had some thoughts of doing, knowing the trickery of these Jemtlanders."

"Two things I feared," replied Estein. "One that you might do that; the other, that a troop of as villainous-looking knaves as you now are yourself might hive out of the wood behind you. But how did you escape last night, and how came you here?"

"Those are the questions I would ask of you," said Helgi; "but one story at a time, and shortly this is mine—a tale, Estein, that for credit to its teller, yoked with truthfulness, I will freely back against yours or ever I hear it."

"I doubt it not," replied his friend, with a smile; "you have the look of one who is high in favour with himself."

"As I ought!" cried Helgi. "But hear me, and gibe not before the end. I left that hall, accursed of the gods, and over full, I fear, of drunken men, in the manner you witnessed. My counterfeit of drunkenness was so exceedingly lifelike, that even when I got outside I felt my head buzz round in the fresh air and my legs sway more than is their wont. 'Friend Helgi,' I said to myself, 'you have drunk not one horn too few if you value your life at its proper worth.' Upon that I applied a handful of snow to my face, and thereupon, on counting my fingers, was able to get within one of the customary number—erring, if I remember rightly, upon the generous side, as befitted my disposition. But to get on to the moving part of my adventures—Where do you take me now?"

"'Tis all right," replied Estein, "I take you to supper and a fire. They come in my story."

"Lead on then," said Helgi. "To continue my tale: I walked with much assurance up to the gateway, singing, I remember, the song of Odin and the Jotun to prove the clearness of my head. There I found a sentinel who, it seemed, had lately been sharing in the hospitality of King Bue. Certain it is that he was more than half drunk, and so fast asleep that he woke not even at my singing, and I had to prod him with the hilt of my sword to arouse the sluggard."

"Then you woke him!" exclaimed Estein, between amusement and surprise.

"How else could I pass? The man leaned so heavily upon the gate, that wake him I must, for I liked not to slay a sleeping man, even though he stood upon his feet. He looked upon me like a startled cow, and said, 'You are a cursed Norseman.' 'It would seem so, indeed,' I replied, and thereupon ran him through with my blade and opened the gate. Then a plan both humorous and ingenious came upon my mind, for my wits were strangely sharp. I laid the man out under the shadow of the fence, where he could not well be seen save by such as had more clearness of vision than becomes the guests of so hospitable a monarch as King Bue, and having stripped him of his coat and put it round mine own shoulders, I took his place and awaited your coming."

"Singing all the while?" said Estein.

"Softly and to myself," replied Helgi; "for what is becoming enough in a guest is not always so well suited to a sentinel. There I stood, stamping my feet and beating my arms upon my breast to keep the cold away, till I began to think that something was amiss."

"Then while I was scaling the wall at one end of the court, you were guarding the gate at the other!" exclaimed Estein.

"So it would appear now, though I pledge you my word I had no thought of such a thing as I watched that gate last night. In truth, what I had done began to seem to me so plainly the best thing to do, that I thought you would surely follow my movements in your mind—so far as drink allowed you, and come straightway to the gate in full confidence of finding me on duty. I see now that your plan had its merits, though I still maintain that mine was the better."

"Saving only in so far as it left me at the trysting-place alone," said Estein.

"And me to shiver at the gate," answered Helgi, with a laugh. "Well, after a time, which seemed long enough, though doubtless a shorter space than I thought, the hall door opened, and men rushed out with much needless uproar. Then, I must confess, I e'en left my post with all the haste I could, and concealed me in the outbuildings of a small house close without the gate. The door was open, but it was so pitch black inside that I knew they could not see me, though them I saw plainly enough as they stopped at the gate."

"Who were they?" asked Estein.

"The black traitor Thorar, and with him some ten or twelve others, doubtless all the sober men at the feast. It took them but a short space to find the dead sentinel; and thereupon Thorar, who seemed almost beside himself with anger, sent the others off in haste to intercept our road to Ketill, while he himself ran to collect a force from the village. Then I bethought me it was well to have company on the road, so I even joined myself to my pursuers. Luckily they went not by the open glade, but kept a path well shaded and very dark, and for the best part of an hour we must have run together through the wood.

"At last we reached a solitary woodman's house, and there for a brief space we paused to inquire of the good man whether he had seen us pass that way. It was a wise inquiry, and the answer was such as an entirely sober man might have reasonably expected. The woodman was in the village at the feast, and his wife, good woman, had been in bed for the last two hours, and strangely enough had not seen us. So our brisk lads started off at the run again. But there we parted company, for I was tired of chasing myself, and the woman had a pleasant voice, and, so far as I could see, a comely countenance."

Estein laughed aloud. "My story will seem a tame narrative after this," he exclaimed.

"Did not I say so," said Helgi. "Well, I fell behind, and presently was knocking up the good woman again, for I said to myself, 'These dogs will not surely come to this house a second time, and a night in the cold woods is not to my liking.' So to make a long story short, I wrought so upon the tender heart of the woodman's wife that, Norseman as I was, she gave me shelter and bed, and promised to send me off in the morning before her husband returned."

"As most wives would," interposed Estein.

Helgi laughed. "Fate had decided otherwise," he continued. "Even as I was eating my morning meal, the goodwife waiting on me most courteously, the door opened and the husband entered. I saw from the man's ugly look that all his wife's wiles were lost upon him; but the dog was a cowardly dog, and feared the game he thirsted to fix his treacherous teeth in. He had nothing for it but to equip me with this great sheep-skin coat and cap, and a stout bow and sheaf of arrows; and then, after a most kindly parting with his goodwife, I made him set me on my way to Ketill. He liked not the job over much, yet he dared not refuse, and so we started. I shrewdly suspected, from my memory of the way I had come overnight, that he was leading me back to King Bue's hall, and meant on our parting to put a horde of his rascally fellows in my way. I cared little, however, for I had mine own ending for our walk. When we had gone a little way I stopped and said to him,—

"'My friend, I am loth to lose your company, but here is the parting of our ways. Mine I need not trouble you with, but yours for a space will lead you little further in any direction.' And with that I bound him firmly to a tree, and left him to think upon his misdeeds. Since then, Estein, I have wandered through these forests like a man in a fog, cursing roundly the land and all its inhabitants."

"Yet it would seem that it is they who have most reason to complain of your dealings with them," said Estein, smiling.

"I would I were well quit of the land," replied his friend. "My heart felt glad when I saw in the glade a man habited after the fashion of the natives. 'There will be one less Jemtlander to- night,' I said, as I laid an arrow on my bow. 'By all the gods, Estein, I shall laugh whenever I think of it!

"But tell me your adventures."

Estein told him shortly what had befallen him, excepting only his seeing the girl in the village. He had made up his mind that the resemblance must have been the work of fancy, yet as soon as they had reached the house of Atli, he took the old man aside, and asked him,—

"Shall I then sail when the snows have melted?"

"Assuredly," replied the seer; "wouldst thou delay what the gods and the dead enjoin?"



CHAPTER XIV.

THE MIDNIGHT GUEST.

Jomar had returned early in the day, and they found him already wrapped up in his bear-skin fast asleep before the fire.

"Gave he my warning to Ketill?" Estein asked Atli.

"Assuredly," replied the old man; "I have never known him fail me, little though he may have liked the errand."

"And what said Ketill? Had they been attacked? What news brought Jomar back?"

"Let us wake the knave, and ask him," said Helgi; and suiting the action to the word, he drove one foot sufficiently hard into the sleeper's side to rouse him with a start.

"What said friend Ketill?" Helgi went on, careless of the man's ugly look; "sent he back any message?"

Jomar answered with a dark scowl, regarding him steadily for a minute as if to make sure who he was, and then he snapped back shortly,—

"He said he had lost a dog that answered to the name of Helgi, and would be well pleased if the beast had died of the mange in the wood," and without another word he rolled over and closed his eyes again.

"'Dog!'" cried Helgi. "Hound, I will beat one dog as it deserves!"

In another instant the Jemtlander would have suffered for his temerity, had not Atli seized the angry Norseman's arm, exclaiming,—

"Peace, Helgi Sigvaldson! Wouldst thou strike my servant in mine own house? The man loves not Norsemen, yet has he saved thy foster-brother's life, and likely, too, those of Ketill and all his company."

"Tell us, Atli," interposed Estein, "what he said on his return."

"Little he told even me," replied Atli, "save that he had seen Ketill for the briefest possible space, and then returned straightway home."

"Did he hear aught of the twenty good men who followed us to King Bue's hall?"

It was Jomar himself who replied, though without turning over or looking at the speaker.

"Would you have me save them, too, from their fate? I heard naught of them, and wish only to hear of their deaths. Too many enemies have I helped already."

Helgi was about to reply hotly, but Atli checked him with a gesture, whispering,—

"Will not his deeds atone for his words?"

Low as he spoke, Jomar caught the words, and muttered loud enough to be heard,—

"Would that my words might become my deeds."

Nothing about the mysterious old man had impressed Estein more than his extraordinary influence over this strange disciple or servant, for he seemed to be partly both; and that one who so loathed and hated the Norsemen could be made to serve his enemies at a word, seemed to point to a power beyond the ken of ordinary man. Helgi, too, was evidently struck, for he looked askance from one to the other, and then fell silent.

By sunrise next morning, the foster-brothers arranged to start for Ketill under Jomar's guidance, and little time was lost in getting to bed. They went up to the loft by the ladder, heard Atli open a door and evidently enter some inner room, then being very drowsy after the cold air, shortly fell asleep.

Yet the night was not to pass without incident. Helgi knew not how long he had been asleep, when he woke with a shiver, to find that his blankets had slipped off him. He gathered them over him again, and then lay for a few minutes listening to the rising wind. As it beat up in mournful gusts and soughed through the pines, he said to himself, "The frost has left at last, and thankful am I for that." He was just dropping off to sleep again, when his attention was startled into wakefulness by a knock at the outer door. It was repeated twice, and then he heard Jomar rise with much growling, and go softly across the floor. There followed a parley apparently through a closed door, which ended in a bolt shooting back, and the door opening with a whistle of wind. So far he had been in that half-waking state when things produce a confused and almost monstrous impression, but suddenly his wits were startled into quickness. Among several voices that seemed to talk with Jomar, his ear all at once caught a woman's. Even the approach of an enemy could not have made him more alert. He listened keenly and, with a sensible feeling of disappointment, heard the door close, the noise cease, and Jomar's steps quietly cross the floor again. This time, however, they went right to the other end of the room, and an inner door opened. He thought he caught Atli's tones answering his sullen servant, and presently he heard two men come out and go to the outer door. Again, with a blast of cold draught, it opened, and the talk began a second time. His curiosity was keenly excited; he could pick out a woman's voice most unmistakably, and at last he heard the conference come to an end. The door closed, the party seemed to go away, and then whispering began in the room below him.

"The woman has come in!" he said to himself, with a start of excitement. "Helgi, this matter needs your attention."

His bed, the outermost of the two, consisted merely of a coarse mattress laid so far back in the loft that the edge of the flooring hid all view of the room below. Very softly he proceeded to throw off the blankets and crawl quietly towards the edge, till he had gone far enough to get a clear sight of the fire. There he lay, and smiled to himself at the prospect below.

The fire had been raked up to burn brightly, and Jomar, as before, lay fast asleep beside it; but between Helgi and the blaze stood the old seer and the hooded and cloaked form of a woman. Her face was hidden, but her back, the watcher thought, promised well. She was tall, and seemed young, and her movements, as she held out her hands to the flames, or half turned to address the old man, had grace and the marks of good birth. They talked so low that Helgi could catch nothing they said, and even the quality of the girl's voice only reached him in snatches.

"A pleasant voice, methinks," he said to himself. "Atli, this booty must be shared."

She seemed to be telling a narrative to Atli, who, with folded arms and deep attention that sometimes passed into suppressed emotion, looked intently at her, and frequently broke in with some whispered question.

The Viking had not been watching very long when the girl's voice rose a little as she said something earnestly, and Atli, with a slight movement and a warning frown, glanced up at the loft and pointed with one finger straight at where Helgi lay. Instantly he dropped his head, and as quickly as he dared crawled back to bed again. There was silence for a moment, but apparently they suspected nothing, for the whispered talk went on again.

"By valour or guile I shall see that maiden's face," he said to himself, as he lay revolving possible schemes in his mind.

At last the whispering stopped, and Atli's step crossed the room and passed into the inner apartment. The door closed behind him, and then saying to himself, "Now or never, my friend," Helgi quietly slipped into his sheep-skin coat, and stepping softly so as not to disturb Estein or the seer, came boldly down the ladder.

The girl's look, as he turned at the foot and faced her, stuck in his mind for long after. Consternation and her sense of the ludicrous were having such an obvious struggle in every feature, that after looking straight into her face for a moment, he fairly burst into a silent convulsion of laughter that shook him till he had to steady himself by a rung of the ladder. So infectious was it, that after the briefest conflict, consternation fled the field, a little smile appeared, and then a merrier, and in a moment she was laughing with him. And certainly for a man commonly most careful of his appearance, he cut a comical enough figure, with his shoeless feet and tangled hair, and the great ill-fitting sheep-skin coat huddled round him to hide the poverty beneath.

"I fear my habit pleases not your eye," he said at last, striving to control his countenance.

"It is—" she began, and then her gravity for an instant forsook her again. "It is highly befitting," she said, more soberly and a little shyly.

"In truth, a garb to win a maiden's heart; but I recked not of my clothing, I was in such haste to see the maid," said Helgi boldly.

She looked at him with some surprise, and just a sufficient touch of dignity to check the dash of his advances. He saw the change, and quickly added,—

"To be quite honest with you, I knew not indeed that you were here, and feeling cold I came down to warm me. I should ask your pardon."

"Not so," she said; "how could you know that I was here? I have only just arrived."

"And I," replied Helgi, "leave early in the morning, though now I would fain stay longer. So you will soon forget the man in the sheepskin coat who so alarmed you."

"But not the coat," she said demurely, her blue eyes lighting up again. Helgi's vanity was a little stung, but he answered gaily,—

"I then will remember your face, and you—"

At that instant a door opened, and turning suddenly he saw Atli come from behind a great bearskin that concealed the entrance to his inner chamber. The old man's face grew dark with displeased surprise, yet he hesitated for an instant, as if uncertain what to do. Then he came up to the girl and said,—

"Thy chamber is ready for thee." To Helgi he added, "I would speak with thee, Helgi."

The girl at once left the fire, and followed him back to the other room. As she turned away, Helgi said,—