But Alwin’s voice rose high above it.  “Fools!  Is it worth while for me to give my life for a lie?  Ask Sigurd Haraldsson, if you will not believe me.  He knows that I went there on Yule Eve, to ask concerning my freedom.  The knife slipped from my belt as I was climbing the rocks.  Leif knew of it no more than you.  Ask Sigurd Haraldsson, if you will not believe me.”

Sigurd rose and tried to speak, but his tongue had become like a withered leaf in his mouth, so that he could only bow his head.

Yet from him, that was enough.  Such an uproar of delight broke from Leif’s men as drowned all the jeering that had gone before, and made the rafters ring with exulting.  Alwin knew that, whatever else he would have to bear, at least that lie was not upon him, and he drew a deep breath of relief.  All the light did not die out of his face, even when Leif stepped out of the shadow of the door and stood before him.

She had not spoken falsely who had said that the fire of Eric burned in the veins of his son.  In his white-hot anger, the guardsman’s face was terrible.  Death was in his stern-set mouth, and death blazed from his eyes.  Rolf, Sigurd, Helga, even Valbrand, cried out for mercy; but Alwin read the look aright, and asked for nothing that was not there.

While their cries were still in the air, Leif’s blade leaped from its scabbard, quivered in the light, and flashed down, biting through fur and hair and flesh and bone.  Without a sound, Alwin fell forward heavily, and lay upon his face at his master’s feet.

That all men might know whose hand had done the deed, Leif flung the dripping sword down beside its victim, and without speaking, strode out of the room.

Then a strange thing happened.  Helga ran over to where the lifeless heap lay in a widening pool of blood, and raised the wounded head in her arms, and rained down upon the still white face such tears as no one had ever thought to see her shed.  When Thorhild came to take her away, she cried out, so that every one could hear: 

“Do you not understand?—­I loved him.  I did not find it out until now.  I loved him with all my heart, and now he will never know!  I—­loved him.”

CHAPTER XXI

THE HEART OF A SHIELD-MAIDEN

Cattle die,
Kindred die,
We ourselves also die;
But the fair fame
Never dies
Of him who has earned it. 

          Ha’vama’l

Out of doors the stir of spring was in the air; snow melting on the hills, grass sprouting on the plains.  Editha’s troubled face brightened a little, as she turned up the lane against the sun and felt its warmth upon her cheek.

“It gives one the feeling that it will melt one’s sorrows as it melts the snow,” she told herself.

Then she passed through the gate into the budding courtyard, where her eye fell upon Leif’s sleeping-loft, with Kark running briskly up the steps; and the brightness faded.