“Nor do I altogether believe that it was to escape from Gilli that she took this venture upon herself.  By her own story, Gilli had gone away for the season and left her free.  It is my opinion that it took something of more importance to steal the wits out of her.”

Helga blanched.  If he was going to pry into her motives, what might not the next words bring out?  Under the Norman’s silken tunic, an English heart leaped, and then stood still.  There was a pause in which no one seemed to breathe.  But the next words were as unexpected as the last.

Of a sudden, Leif started up with a gesture of impatience.  “Have I nothing to think of besides your follies?  Trouble me no longer with the sight of you.  Tyrker, take the girl below and see to it that she is cared for.”  While the culprits stared at him, scarcely daring to credit their ears, he still further signified that the incident was closed, by turning his back upon them and inviting Robert Sans-Peur to take the German’s place at the chess-board.

In a daze of bewilderment, Sigurd let Rolf lead him away.  “What can he mean by such an ending?” he marvelled, as soon as it was safe to voice his thoughts.  “How comes it that he will stop before he has found out her real motive?  It cannot be that he will drop it thus.  Did you not see the black look he gave me as I left?” He raised his eyes to Rolf’s face, and drew back resentfully.  “What are you smiling at?” he demanded.

“At your stupidity,” Rolf laughed into his ear.  “Do you not see that he believes he has found out her real motive?” As Sigurd continued to stare, the Wrestler shook him to arouse his slumbering faculties.  “Simpleton!  He thinks it was for love of you that Helga fled from Norway!”

“Nomdu_diable_!” breathed Sigurd.  Yet the longer he thought of it, the more clearly he saw it.  By and by, he drew a breath of relief that ended in a laugh.  “And he thinks to make me envious by putting my Norman friend before me!  Do you see?  He in-tends it as a punishment.  By Saint Michael, it seems almost too amusing to be true!”

CHAPTER XXV

“WHERE NEVER MAN STOOD BEFORE”

Wit is needful
To him who travels far: 
At home all is easy. 

          Ha’vama’l

Four days of threading fog-thickets and ploughing over watery wastes, and the stanch little vessel pushed her way into sight of the first of the unknown lands.  It towered up ahead like a storm-cloud, bleak and barren-looking as Greenland itself.  From its inhospitable heights and glaciers gleaming coldly in the sunshine, they knew it at once for the last-seen land of Biorn’s narrative.

“It looks to me like a good omen that we are to begin where Biorn left off,” Rolf observed to one of the men engaged in lowering the ship’s boat.

The fellow was a stalwart Icelander who had every current superstition at his tongue’s end, and was even accredited with the gift of second sight.  He hunched his shoulders sceptically, as he bent over the ropes.