Now they ride from the east.

Njal sought to get a priesthood and leadership for Hauskuld, but no one was willing to sell his priesthood, and now the summer passes away till the Althing.

There were great quarrels at the Thing that summer, and many a man then did as was their wont, in faring to see Njal; but he gave such counsel in men’s lawsuits as was not thought at all likely, so that both the pleadings and the defence came to naught, and out of that great strife arose, when the lawsuits could not be brought to an end, and men rode home from the Thing unatoned.

Now things go on till another Thing comes.  Njal rode to the Thing, and at first all is quiet until Njal says that it is high time for men to give notice of their suits.

Then many said that they thought that came to little, when no man could get his suit settled, even though the witnesses were summoned to the Althing, “and so,” say they, “we would rather seek our rights with point and edge.”

“So it must not be,” says Njal, “for it will never do to have no law in the land.  But yet ye have much to say on your side in this matter, and it behoves us who know the law, and who are bound to guide the law, to set men at one again, and to ensue peace.  ’Twere good counsel, then, methinks, that we call together all the chiefs and talk the matter over.”

Then they go to the Court of Laws, and Njal spoke and said—­

“Thee, Skapti Thorod’s son and you other chiefs, I call on, and say, that methinks our lawsuits have come into a deadlock, if we have to follow up our suits in the Quarter Courts, and they get so entangled that they can neither be pleaded nor ended.  Methinks, it were wiser if we had a Fifth Court, and there pleaded those suits which cannot be brought to an end in the Quarter Courts.”

“How,” said Skapti, “wilt thou name a Fifth Court, when the Quarter Court is named for the old priesthoods, three twelves in each quarter?”

“I can see help for that,” says Njal, “by setting up new priesthoods, and filling them with the men who are best fitted in each Quarter, and then let those men who are willing to agree to it, declare themselves ready to join the new priest’s Thing.”

“Well,” says Skapti, “we will take this choice; but what weighty suits shall come before the court?”

“These matters shall come before it,” says Njal—­“all matters of contempt of the Thing, such as if men bear false witness, or utter a false finding; hither, too, shall come all those suits in which the Judges are divided in opinion in the Quarter Court; then they shall be summoned to the Fifth Court; so, too, if men offer bribes, or take them, for their help in suits.  In this court all the oaths shall be of the strongest kind, and two men shall follow every oath, who shall support on their words of honour what the others swear.  So it shall be also, if the pleadings on one side are right in form, and the other wrong, that the judgment