For a while the climbing was easy, but at length they came to a great wall of rock, a hundred fathoms high, on which no fox might find a foothold, nor anything that had not wings.

“Here now is an end of our journey,” said Gizur, “and I only pray this, that Eric may not ride round the mountain before we are down again.”  For he did not know that Brighteyes already rode hard for Middalhof.

“Not so,” said the thrall, “if only I can find the place by which, some thirty summers ago, I won yonder rift, and through it the crest of the fell,” and he pointed to a narrow cleft in the face of the rock high above their heads, that was clothed with grey moss.

Then he moved to the right and searched, peering behind stones and birch-bushes, till presently he held up his hand and whistled.  They passed along the slope and found him standing by a little stream of water which welled from beneath a great rock.

“Here is the place,” the man said.

“I see no place,” answered Swanhild.

“Still, it is there, lady,” and he climbed on to the rock, drawing her after him.  At the back of it was a hole, almost overgrown with moss.  “Here is the path,” he said again.

“Then it is one that I have no mind to follow,” answered Swanhild.  “Gizur, go thou with the man and see if his tale is true.  I will stay here till ye come back.”

Then the thrall let himself down into the hole and Gizur went after him.  But Swanhild sat there in the shadow of the rock, her chin resting on her hand, and waited.  Presently, as she sat, she saw two men ride round the base of the fell, and strike off to the right towards a turf-booth which stood the half of an hour’s ride away.  Now Swanhild was the keenest-sighted of all women of her day in Iceland, and when she looked at these two men she knew one of them for Jon, Eric’s thrall, and she knew the horse also—­it was a white horse with black patches, that Jon had ridden for many years.  She watched them go till they came to the booth, and it seemed to her that they left their horses and entered.

Swanhild waited upon the side of the fell for nearly two hours in all.  Then, hearing a noise above her, she looked up, and there, black with dirt and wet with water, was Gizur, and with him was the thrall.

“What luck, Gizur?” she asked.

“This, Swanhild:  Eric may hold Mosfell no more, for we have found a way to bolt the fox.”

“That is good news, then,” said Swanhild.  “Say on.”

“Yonder hole, Swanhild, leads to the cleft above, having been cut through the cliff by fire, or perhaps by water.  Now up that cleft a man may climb, though hardly, as by a difficult stair, till he comes to the flat crest of the fell.  Then, crossing the crest, on the further side, perhaps six fathoms below him, he sees that space of rock where is Eric’s cave; but he cannot see the cave itself, because the brow of the cliff hangs over.  And so it is that, if any come from the cave on to the space of rock, it will be an easy matter to roll stones upon them from above and crush them.”