Helga flung her arms open wide.  “Forgive?  I forgive everyone in the whole world—­everything!” She threw herself, sobbing, upon Editha’s breast, and they clung together like sisters.

While they were still mingling their tears and rejoicings, the old housekeeper looked in with a message from Thorhild.

“Sniffling, as I had expected!  Have the wits left both of you?  Even now Gilli of Trondhjem is coming up the lane.  It is the command of Thorhild that you be dressed and ready to hand him his ale the moment he has taken off his outer garments.  If you have any sense left, make haste.”

When the door had closed on the wrinkled old visage, Editha sent a doubtful glance at her mistress.  But the shield-maiden leaped up with a laugh like a joyful chime of bells.

“Gladly will I put on the finest clothes I own, and feast the whole night through!  Nothing matters now.  So long as he is alive, things must come out right some way.  Nothing matters now!”

CHAPTER XXII

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD

It is better to live,
Even to live miserably;
.......... 
The halt can ride on horseback;
The one-handed, drive cattle;
The deaf, fight and be useful;
To be blind is better
Than to be burnt;
No one gets good from a corpse. 

          Ha’vama’l

“Egil!  Egil Olafsson!” It was Helga’s voice, with a note of happiness thrilling through it like the trill in a canary’s song.

Egil turned from the field in which his men were and came slowly to where she stood leaning over the fence that separated the field from the lane.  He guessed from her voice that they had told her the secret, and when he came near enough to see, he knew it from her face; it was like a rose-garden burst into bloom.  His lowering brow scowled itself into a harder knot.  With the death of his father, he had thrown aside the scarlet clothes of Leif’s men, and wore the brown homespun of a farmer.  From his neck downward, everything spoke of thrift and industry and peace.  But his fierce dark face looked the harsher for the contrast.

Helga stretched her hand across the fence.  “I am going to see Alwin, for the first time after all these months.  They told me two days ago, but this is the first chance I could find.  But even before I saw him, I thought it right to see you and thank you for your wondrous goodness.  Sigurd has told me how they carried Alwin to you in the night, and you received him and sheltered him, and—­”

Egil silenced her with a rough gesture.  “I kept my oath of friendship; speak no further of it.  Do you know where he is hidden?”

“Sigurd told me he is in the cabin of your old foster-mother, Solveig.  I do not remember whether that is to the left or the right of the lane.  But it is a most ingenious hiding-place.  No one ever goes there, and Solveig is the most accomplished of nurses.”