In accordance with the fashion of the day, Brattahlid was a hall not only in the sense of being a large room, but in being a building by itself,—­and a building it was of entirely unique appearance.  Instead of consisting of huge logs, as Norse houses almost invariably did, three sides of it had been built of immense blocks of red sandstone; and for the fourth side, a low, perpendicular, smooth rock had been used, so that one of the inner walls was formed by a natural cliff between ten and twelve feet high.  Undoubtedly it was from this peculiarity that the name Brattahlid had been bestowed upon it, Brattahlid signifying ’steep side of a rock.’  Its style was the extreme of simplicity, for a square opening in the roof took the place of a chimney, and it had few windows, and those were small and filled with a bladder-like membrane instead of glass; yet it was not without a certain impressiveness.  The hall was so large that nearly two hundred men could find seats on the two benches that ran through it from end to end.  Its walls were of a symmetry and massiveness to outlast the wear of centuries; and the interior had even a certain splendor.

To-night, decked for a feast, it was magnificent to behold.  Gay-hued tapestries covered the sides, along which rows of round shields overlapped each other like bright painted scales.  Over the benches were laid embroidered cloths; while the floor was strewn with straw until it sparkled as with a carpet of spun gold.  Before the benches, on either side of the long stone hearth that ran through the centre of the hall, stood tables spread with covers of flax bleached white as foam.  The light of the crackling pine torches quivered and flashed from gilded vessels, and silver-covered trenchers, and goblets of rarely beautiful glass, ruby and amber and emerald green.

“I have nowhere seen a finer hall,” Alwin admitted to Sigurd, as they pushed their way in through the crowd.  “If the high-seats were different, and the fire-place was against the wall, and there were reeds upon the floor instead of straw, it would not be unlike what my father’s castle was.”

“If I were altogether different, would I look like a Saxon maiden also?” Helga’s voice laughed in his ear.  She had come in through the women’s door, with Thorhild and a throng of high-born women.  Already she was transformed.  A trailing gown of blue made her seem to have grown a head taller.  Bits of finery—­a gold belt at her waist, a gold brooch on her breast, a string of amber beads around the white neck that showed coquettishly above the snowy kerchief—­banished the last traces of the shield-maiden, For the first time, it occurred to Alwin that she was more than a good comrade,—­she was a girl, a beautiful girl, the kind that some day a man would love and woo and win.  He gazed at her with wonder and admiration, and something more; gazed so intently that he did not see Egil’s eyes fastened upon him.

Helga laughed at his surprise; then she frowned.  “If you say that you like me better in these clothes, I shall be angry with you,” she whispered sharply.