Gunnar came home from the Thing and blamed Hallgerda.  She said, better men lay unatoned in many places, Gunnar said, she might have her way in beginning a quarrel, “but how the matter is to be settled rests with me”.

Hallgerda was for ever chattering of Swart’s slaying, but Bergthora liked that ill.  Once Njal and her sons went up to Thorolfsfell to see about the housekeeping there, but that selfsame day this thing happened when Bergthora was out of doors:  she sees a man ride up to the house on a black horse.  She stayed there and did not go in, for she did not know the man.  That man had a spear in his hand, and was girded with a short sword.  She asked this man his name.

“Atli is my name,” says he.

She asked whence he came.

“I am an Eastfirther,” he says.

“Whither shalt thou go?” she says.

“I am a homeless man,” says he, “and I thought to see Njal and Skarphedinn, and know if they would take me in.”

“What work is handiest to thee?” says she.

“I am a man used to field-work,” he says, “and many things else come very handy to me; but I will not hide from thee that I am a man of hard temper and it has been many a man’s lot before now to bind up wounds at my hand.”

“I do not blame thee,” she says, “though thou art no milksop.”

Atli said—­“Hast thou any voice in things here?”

“I am Njal’s wife,” she says, “and I have as much to say to our housefolk as he.”

“Wilt thou take me in then?” says he.

“I will give thee thy choice of that,” says she.  “If thou wilt do all the work that I set before thee, and that though I wish to send thee where a man’s life is at stake.”

“Thou must have so many men at thy beck,” says he, “that thou wilt not need me for such work.”

“That I will settle as I please,” she says.

“We will strike a bargain on these terms,” says he.

Then she took him into the household.  Njal and his sons came home and asked Bergthora what man that might be?

“He is thy house-carle,” she says, “and I took him in.”  Then she went on to say he was no sluggard at work.

“He will be a great worker enough, I daresay,” says Njal, “but I do not know whether he will be such a good worker.”

Skarphedinn was good to Atli.

Njal and his sons ride to the Thing in the course of the summer; Gunnar was also at the Thing.

Njal took out a purse of money.

“What money is that, father?”

“Here is the money that Gunnar paid me for our house-carle last summer.”

“That will come to stand thee in some stead,” says Skarphedinn, and smiled as he spoke.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE SLAYING OF KOL, WHOM ATLI SLEW.

Now we must take up the story, and say that Atli asked Bergthora what work he should do that day.