From the chief came much the same kind of a grunt as had come from the bear at the fall of his foe.  Glancing with only a kind of contemptuous curiosity at his wounded arm, he stepped quickly to the side of his prostrate follower and bent over him.

“You have got what you deserve for breaking my orders,” he said, grimly.  “Yet turn over that I may attend to your wounds before you bleed to death.”

In the activity which followed, Robert of Normandy took no part.  He leaned against a tree with his arms folded upon his breast, his eyes upon the slain bear which half of the party were hastily converting into steaks and hide.  The men muttered to each other that the Southerner was in a rage because he had lost his chance, but that was only a part of the truth.  His fixed eyes no longer saw the bear; his ears were deaf to the voices around him.  He saw again a shadowy room, lit by leaping flames and shifting eyes; and once more a lisping voice hissed its “jargon” into his ear.

“I see Leif Ericsson standing upon earth where never man stood before; and I see you standing by his side, though you do not look as you look now, for your hair is long and black...  I see that it is in this new land that it will be settled whether your luck is to be good or bad...”

He said slowly to himself, like a man talking in his sleep, “It has been settled, and it is to be bad.”

Then the room passed from his vision.  He saw in its place Rolf’s derisive smile, and heard again his mocking query:  “Is it your opinion that Leif Ericsson needs your protection against wild beasts?”

Of a sudden he flung back his head and burst into a loud laugh that jarred on the ear like grating steel.

When at last Lodin’s wounds were dressed so that he could be helped along between two of his comrades, the party began a slow return.  By the time they came out on to the shining white beach again, they were a battered-looking lot.  There was not a mantle among them but what hung in tatters, nor a scratched face that did not mingle blood with berry juice.  But at their head, the huge bear skin was borne like a captured banner.  At the sight of it, their waiting comrades burst into shouts of admiration and envy that reached as far as the anchored ship.

“Never was such sport heard of!”—­“A better land is nowhere to be found!” they clamored.  “In one month we could secure enough skins to make us wealthy for the rest of our lives!”

And then some muttered asides were added:  “It is a great pity to leave such a place.”—­“It is folly to give up certain wealth for vague possibilities.”  And though the dissatisfaction rose no louder than a murmur, it spread on every hand like fire in brush.

Now there was one man among the explorers who had been a member of Biorn Herjulfsson’s crew, and was brimful of conceit and the ambition to be a leader among his fellows.  When the command to embark swelled the murmurs almost to an outspoken grumbling, he thought he saw a chance to push into prominence, and swaggered boldly forward.