“Who is it now that love is making a coward of?”

She shook her head gravely.  “I am no coward.  It gladdens me to have you face death in this way, and to know that you will not murmur even if luck goes against you.  But I do not wish you to throw your life away; and you know no prudence.  Let us speak of this disguise.  What have you fixed upon?”

“I acknowledge that I have accomplished very little.  Solveig has told me of a bark whose juice is such that with it I can turn my skin brown like that of the Southerners.  And I have decided to make believe that I am a Frankish man.  I know not a little of their tongue, which will help to disguise my speech.  But how I am to cover up my short hair, or account for my appearance in Greenland—­” He shrugged his shoulders, and dropped his chin upon his fist.

Helga clasped her hands around her knee and stared at him thoughtfully.  “I have heard Sigurd tell of a strange wonder he saw in France,—­I do not know what you call it,—­like a hood made of people’s hair.  A girl who had lost her hair through sickness was wont to wear it; and Sigurd did not even suspect that it was rootless, until one day she caught the ends in her cloak, and pulled it off.  If you could get one of those—­”

“If!” Alwin murmured.  But Helga did not hear him.  Suddenly, in the dim perspective of her mind, she had caught a glimpse of a plan.  As she darted at it, it eluded her; but she chased it to and fro, seeing it more clearly at each turn.  Finally she caught it.  She leaped up and opened her mouth to shout it forth, when an impulse of Editha’s caution touched her, and instead, she threw her arms around his neck and laughed it into his ear.

He drew back and gazed at her with dawning appreciation.  She nodded excitedly.

“Is it not well fitted to succeed?  You can escape to Norway as I planned, and after that you can easily reach Normandy.  All that you lack is gold, and Leif and Gilli have covered me with that.”

His face kindled as he mused on it.  “It sounds possible.  Sigurd’s friends would receive me well for his sake; and after I had got everything for my disguise, I would have yet many good chances to return to Nidaros and board the ship of Arnor Gunnarsson, who comes here each summer on a trading voyage.  Coming that way, who could suspect me?—­particularly when it is everyone’s belief that I am dead.”

“No one!” Helga cried joyously.  “No one!  It is perfect!”

In a sudden burst of gratitude, he caught her hands and kissed them.  “All is due to you, then.  It is an unheard-of cleverness!  You must be a Valkyria!  Only a great hero is worthy of a maid like you.”

Laughing with pleasure, she hid her face on his breast.  And it must be that her plan possessed some of the advantages she claimed for it, for it came to pass that, on the same day that Gilli and his daughter set sail for Norway, a fair-skinned thrall with a shaven head disappeared from Greenland so completely that even Kark’s keen eyes would have found it impossible to trace him.