“Is my brother Thorstein also in Greenland?” Leif asked the servant.

But the man answered that Eric’s youngest son was absent on a visit to his mother’s kin in Iceland.  When the boat had brought the last man to land, the “Sea-Deer” was left to float at rest until the time of her unloading; and they began to move up from the shore in a boisterous procession.

Between rich pastures and miniature forests of willow and birch and alder, a broad lane ran east over green hill and dale.  Amid a babel of talk and laughter, they passed along the lane, the rank and file performing many jovial capers, slipping bold arms around trim waists and scuffling over bundles of treasure.  Over hill and dale they went for nearly two miles; then, some four hundred feet from the rocky banks of Einar’s Fiord, the lane ended before the wide-thrown gates of a high fence.

If the gates had been closed, one might have guessed what was inside; so unvarying was the plan of Norse manors.  A huge quadrangular courtyard was surrounded by substantial buildings.  To the right was the great hall, with the kitchens and storehouses.  Across the inner side stood the women’s house, with the herb-garden on one hand, and the guest-chambers on the other.  To the left were the stables, the piggery, the sheep-houses, the cow-sheds, and the smithies.

No sooner had they passed the gates than a second avalanche of greetings fell upon them.  Gathered together in the grassy space were more armed retainers, more white-clad thralls, more barking dogs, more house servants in holiday attire, and, at the head of them, the far-famed Eric the Red and his strong-minded Thorhild.

One glance at the Red One convinced Alwin that his reputation did not belie him.  It was not alone his floating hair and his long beard that were fiery; his whole person looked capable of instantaneous combustion.  His choleric blue eyes, now twinkling with good humor, a spark could kindle into a blaze.  A breath could fan the ruddy spots on his cheeks into flames.

As Alwin watched him, he said to himself, “It is not that he was three times exiled for manslaughter which surprises me,—­it is that he was not exiled thirty times.”

Alwin looked curiously at the plump matron, with the stately head-dress of white linen and the bunch of jingling keys at her girdle, and had a surprise of a different kind.  Certainly there were no soft curves in her resolute mouth, and her eyes were as keen as Leif’s; yet it was neither a cruel face nor a shrewish one.  It was full of truth and strength, and there was comeliness in her broad smooth brow and in the unfaded roses of her cheeks.  Ah, and now that the keen eyes had fallen upon Leif, they were no longer sharp; they were soft and deep with mother-love, and radiant with pride.  Her hands stirred as though they could not wait to touch him.

There was a pause of some decorum, while the chief embraced his parents; then the tumult burst forth.  No man could hear himself, much less his neighbor.