“It is not safe as matters are,” answered
Sigrid. “There is all that crowd of dead
people before the door; Thorstein, thy husband, also,
and myself, I recognise among them, and it is a grief
thus to behold.” And when this passed away,
she said, “Let us now go, Gudrid; I see the crowd
no longer.” Thorstein, Eirik’s son,
had also disappeared from her sight; he had seemed
to have a whip in his hand, and to wish to smite the
ghostly troop. Afterwards they went in, and before
morning came she was dead, and a coffin was prepared
for the body. Now, the same day, the men purposed
to go out fishing, and Thorstein led them to the landing
places, and in the early morning he went to see what
they had caught. Then Thorstein, Eirik’s
son, sent word to his namesake to come to him, saying
that matters at home were hardly quiet; that the housewife
was endeavouring to rise to her feet and to get under
the clothes beside him. And when he was come
in she had risen upon the edge of the bed. Then
took he her by the hands and laid a pole-axe upon her
breast. Thorstein, Eirik’s son, died near
nightfall. Thorstein, the franklin, begged Gudrid
to lie down and sleep, saying that he would watch over
the body during the night. So she did, and when
a little of the night was past, Thorstein, Eirik’s
son, sat up and spake, saying he wished Gudrid to
be called to him, and that he wished to speak with
her. “God wills,” he said, “that
this hour be given to me for my own, and the further
completion of my plan.” Thorstein, the franklin,
went to find Gudrid, and waked her; begged her to
cross herself, and to ask God for help, and told her
what Thorstein, Eirik’s son, had spoken with
him; “and he wishes,” said he, “to
meet with thee. Thou art obliged to consider
what plan thou wilt adopt, because I can in this issue
advise thee in nowise.” She answered, “It
may be that this, this wonderful thing, has regard
to certain matters, which are afterwards to be had
in memory; and I hope that God’s keeping will
test upon me, and I will, with God’s grace,
undertake the risk and go to him, and know what he
will say, for I shall not be able to escape if harm
must happen to me. I am far from wishing that
he should go elsewhere; I suspect, moreover, that
the matter will be a pressing one.” Then
went Gudrid and saw Thorstein. He appeared to
her as if shedding tears. He spake in her ear,
in a low voice, certain words which she alone might
know; but this he said so that all heard, “That
those men would be blessed who held the true faith,
and that all salvation and mercy accompanied it; and
that many, nevertheless, held it lightly.”
“It is,” said he, “no good custom
which has prevailed here in Greenland since Christianity
came, to bury men in unconsecrated ground with few
religious rites over them. I wish for myself,
and for those other men who have died, to be taken
to the church; but for Garth, I wish him to be burned
on a funeral pile as soon as may be, for he is the
cause of all those ghosts which have been among us