“Halfden,” I said, having full trust in him, “I may not do this.  I may not honour the old gods, for so should I dishonour the White Christ whom I serve.”

“This is more than I can trouble about in my mind,” said Halfden; “but if it troubles you, I will help you somehow, brother Wulfric.  But you must needs come to the sacrifice.”

“Cannot I go hunting?”

“Why, no; all men must be present.  And to be away would but make things worse, for there would be question.”

Then I strengthened myself, and said that I must even go through with the matter, and so would have no more talk about it.  But Osritha kept on looking sadly at me, and I knew that she was in fear for me.

Now presently we began to talk of my home and how they would mourn me as surely lost.  And I said that this mourning would be likely to hinder my sister’s wedding for a while.  And then, to make a little more cheerful thought, I told Halfden what his father had said about his wishing that he had been earlier with us.

“Why, so do I,” said my comrade, laughing a little; “for many reasons,” he added more sadly, thinking how that all things would have been different had he sailed back at once.

Then he must needs go back to the question of the sacrifice.

“Now I would that you would turn good Dane and Thor’s man, and bide here with us; and then maybe—­”

But Osritha rose up quickly and said that she must begone, and so bade us goodnight and went her way into the upper story of that end of the great hall where her own place was.  Whereat Halfden laughed quietly, looking at me, and when she was quite gone, and the heavy deerskins fell over the doorway, said, still smiling: 

“How is this?  It is in my mind that my father’s wish might easily come to pass in another way not very unlike.”

That was plain speaking, nor would I hesitate to meet the kindly look and smile, but said that indeed I had come to long that it might be so.  But I said that the jarl, his father, had himself shown me that no man should leave his old faith but for better reasons than those of gain, however longed for.  For that is what he had answered Eadmund the king when the land was offered him, and he was asked to become a Christian.

“Yet if such a thing might be,” said Halfden, “gladly would I hail you as brother in very truth.”

So we sat without speaking for a while, and then Halfden said that were I to stand among the crowd of men on the morrow there would surely be no notice taken of me.

Yet as I lay on my wolf skins at the head of the great hall, and prayed silently—­as was my wont among these heathen—­I asked for that same help that had been given to men of old time who were in the same sore strait as I must very likely be in tomorrow.

Then came to me the thought:  “What matters if outwardly I reverence Thor and Odin while I inwardly deny them?” and that excuse had nigh got the better of me.  But I minded what our king had told me many a time:  how that in the first christening of our people it had ever been held to be a denying of our faith to taste the heathen sacrifices, or to bow the head in honour, even but outward, of the idols, so that many had died rather than do so.  And he had praised those who thus gave up their life.