One day it happened that Rodny Hauskuld’s daughter, the mother of Hauskuld Njal’s son, came to the Springs.  Her brother Ingialld greeted her well, but she would not take his greeting, but yet bade him go out with her.  Ingialld did so, and went out with her; and so they walked away from the farmyard both together.  Then she clutched hold of him and they both sat down, and Rodny said—­

“Is it true that thou hast sworn an oath to fall on Njal, and slay him and his sons?”

“True it is,” said he.

“A very great dastard art thou,” she says, “thou, whom Njal hath thrice saved from outlawry.”

“Still it hath come to this,” says Ingialld, “that my life lies on it if I do not this.”

“Not so,” says she, “thou shalt live all the same, and be called a better man, if thou betrayest not him to whom thou oughtest to behave best.”

Then she took a linen hood out of her bag, it was clotted with blood all over, and torn and tattered, and said, “This hood, Hauskuld Njal’s son, and thy sister’s son, had on his head when they slew him; methinks, then, it is ill owing to stand by those from whom this mischief sprang”.

“Well!” answers Ingialld, “so it shall be that I will not be against Njal whatever follows after, but still I know that they will turn and throw trouble on me.”

“Now mightest thou,” said Rodny, “yield Njal and his sons great help, if thou tellest him all these plans.”

“That I will not do,” says Ingialld, “for then I am every man’s dastard, if I tell what was trusted to me in good faith; but it is a manly deed to sunder myself from this quarrel when I know that there is a sure looking for of vengeance; but tell Njal and his sons to beware of themselves all this summer, for that will be good counsel, and to keep many men about them.”

Then she fared to Bergthorsknoll, and told Njal all this talk; and Njal thanked her, and said she had done well, “for there would be more wickedness in his falling on me than of all men else”.

She fared home, but he told this to his sons.

There was a carline at Bergthorsknoll, whose name was Saevuna.  She was wise in many things, and foresighted; but she was then very old, and Njal’s sons called her an old dotard, when she talked so much, but still some things which she said came to pass.  It fell one day that she took a cudgel in her hand, and went up above the house to a stack of vetches.  She beat the stack of vetches with her cudgel, and wished it might never thrive, “wretch that it was!”

Skarphedinn laughed at her, and asked why she was so angry with the vetch stack.

“This stack of vetches,” said the carline, “will be taken and lighted with fire when Njal my master is burnt, house and all, and Bergthora my foster-child.  Take it away to the water, or burn it up as quick as you can.”

“We will not do that,” says Skarphedinn, “for something else will be got to light a fire with, if that were foredoomed, though this stack were not here.”