“She has told me nothing for a week.  She is up at the hall just now, helping with the spinning; but Editha was here two days ago.  Is it of King Olaf that you are thinking?  She told me of the battle; and I am full of sorrow for Leif.  She told me that his room was draped in black, and that he stopped preparing for his exploring voyage and shut himself up for four days and four nights, without eating or speaking.”

“He has begun his preparations again.  His sorrow is not worth considering.  Or, rather, I shall grieve with him when he grieves for you.  The tidings that I mean concern Gilli of Trondhjem.  Do you know that he has come to take me away?”

She wanted to see the despair in his face, that she might feel how much he cared; then she hastened to reassure him.  “But do not trouble yourself over that.  Even though I go with him, it will do no harm.  If he tries to marry me to anyone, I will pretend that I think the marriage beneath me.  I will work upon his greediness, and so trick him into waiting; and in a year you will come and rescue me.”

“If I am alive!” Alwin interrupted her sharply.  He sprang up and began to pace the floor, clenching his fists and knocking them together.  “If I am alive I will come.  But it is by no means unlikely that Leif will carry out his intention.  Then you will be left in Gilli’s power forever.”

She laughed as she went to him and brought him back and pushed him down upon the bench.

“See how love makes a coward of a man as well as of a woman!  But do not trouble yourself over that, either.  Have you never heard the love-tale of Hagberth and Signe?  How, the same moment in which she saw him hanged upon the gallows, she set fire to her house and strangled herself with her ribbons, so that their two souls met on the threshold of Paradise and went in together?  If you die, I will die too; and that will arrange everything.”  She clung to him for a moment, and he feared that she was about to dishonor her shield by a burst of tears.

But in an instant she looked up at him with her brave smile.  “We will end this talk about dying, however.  Remember the old saying, ’If a man’s time has not come, something is sure to aid him.’  There is another fate in store for you than to lose your life in this matter, or you would have died when Leif struck you down.  I love the cap that saved you!  We will not talk about dying, but only of our hopes.  I have planned how Gilli may be made useful, so that on his vessel you can escape to Norway.”

She put her hand over his mouth as he would have spoken.  “No, listen to me before you say anything against it.  Gilli will sail next week.  At that time Leif will be absent on a visit to Biorn Herjulfsson, who has just returned to Greenland from Norway.  With Leif, Kark will go, so that we shall not have his prying eyes to fear.  What would prevent you from stealing down to the shore, the night before we sail, and swimming out to the ship and hiding yourself