Rolf shrugged his shoulders resignedly as they turned away.  “Have it as you choose,” he assented.  “At least you cannot deny that you were helpless; let that console you.  May the gallows take my body if you are not the most thankless man ever I met!  Here are you rid of your enemy, and at the moment when he was most a hindrance to you, and not only do you reap the reward of the deed, but you bear no dangerous responsibility—­”

He was checked by a glimpse of the face Alwin turned toward him.  Pride and loathing, passion and sternness, were all mingled in its expression.

The Saxon said slowly, “Heaven’s mercy on the soul that reaps the reward of this deed!  Easier would it be to suffer these tortures a hundredfold increased.  Profit by such a deed, Rolf Erlingsson!  Do you think that I would live a life that sprang from such a death?  To cleanse my hand from the stain of such a murder, though the blood had but spattered on it, I would hew it off at the wrist.”

CHAPTER XXIX

THE BATTLE TO THE STRONG

He is happy
Who gets for himself
Praise and good-will. 

          Ha’vama’l

It was a picture of sylvan revelry that the sunset light reddened, as it bade farewell to the Norse camp on the river bluff.  On the green before the huts, two of the fair-haired were striving against other in a rousing tug-of-war.  Now the hide was stretched motionless between them; now it was drawn a foot to the right, amid a volley of jeers; and now it was jerked back a foot to the left, with an answering chorus of cheers.  The chief sat under the spreading maple-tree, watching the sport critically, with an occasional gesture of applause.  Over the head of the bear-cub she was fondling, Helga watched it also, with unseeing eyes.  Those who had come in from hunting and fishing sprawled at their ease on the turf, and shouted jovial comments over their wine-cups.

They welcomed Rolf and the Norman with a shout, when the pair appeared on the edge of the grove.

“Hail, comrades!”—­“It was in our minds to give you up for lost!” “Your coming we will take as an omen that Kark will also return some time.”—­“Yes, return and cook us some food.”—­“We are becoming hollow as bubbles.”

Rolf accepted their greetings with an easy flourish.

“You will become also as thin as bubbles if you wait for Kark to cook your food,” he answered, lightly.  “I bring the chief the bad tidings that he has lost his thrall.”  Pushing his companion gently aside, he walked over to where the Lucky One sat.  “It will sound like an old woman’s tale to you, chief,” he warned him; “yet this is nothing but the truth.”

While the skin-pullers abandoned their contest and dropped cross-legged upon the hide to listen, and the outlying circle picked up its drinking horns and crept closer, he related the whole experience, simply and quite truthfully, from beginning to end.