Nothing could have been sturdier than Sigurd’s manner; she did not think to look at his face.

“That may easily be,” he returned.  “Since it angered the chief to find you two together, it would be no more than natural that he should wish to make sure of your separation.”

Helga did not appear to hear him.  She stood transfixed with the horror of a sudden conviction.

“It is to kill him!” she gasped.  “That is why he has taken him away, that he may kill him quietly and without interference.  I will go after them...  By running, I can catch up—­let me go, Sigurd!”

The fact that his foreboding was quite as black as hers did not prevent Sigurd from tightening his grasp, almost to roughness.

He said sternly, “Be still.  You have done harm enough by such crazy actions.  If by any chance he is not discovered, you would be certain to betray him.  You can do nothing but harm in any case.”

As he felt her yield to his grasp, he added, less harshly, “More likely than not, nothing of any importance will happen; if Tyrker is found unharmed, Leif’s joy will be too great to allow him to injure anyone, whatever his offence.”

She interrupted him with a low cry of anguish.  “But if Tyrker is not found, Sigurd!  If Tyrker is not found, Leif will vent his rage upon the nearest excuse.  A Norseman in grief is like a bear with a wound:  it matters not whom he bites.”

Burying her face in her hands, she sank upon the ground and rocked herself back and forth.  Out from the bower of long hair that streamed over her, came pitiful moans.

“He will slay him and leave him out there in the darkness...  I shall not be by to raise his head and weep over him, as I did before ....  Oh, thou God, if there is help in Thee—!  I shall not be with him...  Leif will slay him and leave him out in the darkness, alone...”

Sigurd’s face grew white as he watched her, and he clenched his hands so that the nails sank deep in the flesh.

“There is nothing to do but to wait,” he said, briefly.  “If Tyrker is found, all will be well.”  He paced to and fro before her, his ear set toward the river.

Over in front of the cook-house, Kark’s fires began to twinkle out like altars of good cheer.  Like votaries hurrying to worship at them, the hungry men went and threw themselves on the grass in a circle; with dice and stories and jests they whiled away the time pleasantly enough.

For the pair in the shadow, the moments dragged on lead-shod feet.  Time after time, Sigurd thought he heard the sounds he longed to hear, and started toward the river,—­only to come slowly back, tricked.  An owl began to call in the tree above them; and ever after, Helga connected that sound with death and despair, and shuddered at it.

When at last the distant hum of voices crept upon them, they would not believe it; but sat with eyes glued to the ground, though their ears were strained.  But when one of the approaching voices broke into a rollicking drinking-song, which was caught up by the group around the fire and tossed joyously back and forth, there could no longer be any doubt of the matter.