As they gazed upon the blooming banks and woods and low hills, warm and green with sunlight, cries of admiration burst from every throat.

Valbrand made bold to warn his chief, “Though I do not dispute your will in this, any more than in anything else, I will say that difficulties are to be expected if men are to be parted from such a land without at least tasting of its good things.”

Even for those who had been longest with him, the Lucky One was full of surprises.

“It has never been my intention to continue sailing after we had accomplished the three landings,” he answered quietly.  “Ungrateful to God would we be, were we to fail in showing honor to the good things He has led us to.  I expect to stay over winter in this place.”

CHAPTER XXVI

VINLAND THE GOOD

“...  They sailed toward this land, and came to an island lying north of it, and went ashore in fine weather and looked round.  They found dew on the grass, and touched it with their hands, and put it to their mouths, and it seemed to them that they had never tasted anything so sweet as this dew.  Then they went on hoard and sailed into the channel, which was between the island and the cape which ran north from the mainland.  They passed the cape, sailing in a westerly direction.  There the water was very shallow, and their ship went aground, and at ebb-tide the sea was far out from the ship.  But they were so anxious to get ashore that they could not wait till the high-water reached their ship, and ran out on the beach where a river flowed from a lake.  When the high-water set their ship afloat they took their boat and rowed to the ship and towed it up the river into the lake.  There they cast anchor, and took their leather-bags ashore, and there built booths.”—­FLATEYJARBO’K.

It was October, and it was the new camp, and it was Helga the Fair tripping across the green background with a skirtful of red and yellow thorn-berries and a wreath of fiery autumn leaves upon her sunny head.

Where a tongue of land ran out between a lake-like bay and a river that hurried down to throw herself into its arms, there lay the new settlement.  Facing seaward, the five newly-built huts stood on the edge of a grove that crowned the river bluffs.  Behind them stretched some hundred yards of wooded highland, ending in a steep descent to the river, which served as a sort of back stairway to the stronghold.  Before them, green plains and sandy flats sloped away to the white shore of the bay that rocked their anchored ship upon its bosom.  Over their lowly roofs, stately oaks and elms and maples murmured ceaseless lullabies,—­like women long-childless, granted after a weary waiting the listening ears to be soothed by their crooning.

“I have a feeling that this land has always been watching for us; and that now that we are come, it is glad,” Helga said, happily, as she paused where the jarl’s son leaned in a doorway, watching Kark’s cook-fires leap and wave their arms of blue smoke.  “Is it not a wonderful thought, Sigurd, that it was in God’s mind so long ago that we should some day want to come here?”