The trader’s patience was a little chafed.  Peaceful merchants were also men of war between times in those days.

Suddenly he unsheathed the sword that hung at his side, and laid its point against the thrall’s breast.

“I ask you again of what kin you come.  If you do not answer now, it is unlikely that you will be alive to answer a third question.”

Perhaps young Alwin’s bronzed cheeks lost a little of their color, but his lip curled scornfully.  So they stood, minute after minute, the sharp point pricking through the cloth until the boy felt it against his skin.

Gradually the trader’s face relaxed into a grim smile.  “You are a young wolf,” he said at last, sheathing his weapon; “yet go and sit with the others.  It may be that wolves thrive better than lambs in the North.”

CHAPTER II

THE MAID IN THE SILVER HELMET

    In a maiden’s words
    No one should place faith,
    Nor in what a woman says;
    For on a turning wheel
    Have their hearts been formed,
    And guile in their breasts been laid. 
       Ha’vama’l

Day after day, week after week, Alwin sat waiting to see where the next turn of misfortune’s wheel would land him.  Interesting people visited the booth continually.  Now it was a party of royal guardsmen to buy weapons,—­splendid mail-clad giants who ate at King Olaf’s board, slept a his hall, and fought to the death at his side.  Again it was a minstrel, with a harp at his back, who stopped to rest and exchange a song for a horn of mead.  Once the Queen herself, riding in a shining gilded wagon, came in and bought some of the graceful spiral bracelets.  She said that Alwin’s eyes were as bright as a young serpent’s; but she did not buy him.

The doorway framed an ever changing picture,—­budding birch trees along the river-bank; men ploughing in the valley; shepherds tending flocks that looked like dots of cotton wool on the green hillsides.  Sometimes bands of gay folk from the King’s house rode by to the hunt, spurs jingling, horns braying, falcons at their wrists.  Sometimes brawny followers of the visiting chiefs swaggered past in groups, and the boy could hear their shouting and laughter as they held drinking-bouts in the hostelry near by.  Occasionally their rough voices would grow rougher, and an arrow would fly past the door; or there would be a clash of weapons, followed by a groan.

One day, as Alwin sat looking out, his chin resting in his hand, his elbow on his knee, his attention was caught by two riders winding swiftly down a hill-path on the right.  At first, one was only a blur of gray and the other a flame of scarlet; they disappeared behind a grove of aspens, then reappeared nearer, and he could make out a white beard on the gray figure and a veil of golden hair above the scarlet kirtle.  What hair for a boy, even the noblest born!  It