Out of the fuzzy depths came a lisping voice. "When a thrall of Leif Ericsson, who is also a Christian, thinks it worth while to risk his life and his soul to consult me, I forgive it that I am wakened at midnight. It is a compliment to my powers that I do not take ill. Say what you wish to learn from me."

Alwin felt Sigurd touch him reproachfully, and shame burned in his cheeks; but he had gone too far to retreat. He said bluntly: "I wish to know whether Helga, Gilli's daughter, is to be given to Egil. Each time he speaks across the floor to her, I am as though I were p.r.i.c.ked with sharp knives. I have endured it through three feasts; but I look upon her with such eyes of love, that I can bear it no longer."

"I will dull those knives, even as Odin blunts the weapons of his enemies. Helga will not be given to Egil, because he is too haughty to ask for her since he knows that she loves you instead of him."

It had seemed to Alwin that if he could only know this, he would be satisfied; yet now his questions piled upon each other.

"Then do you promise that she will be given to me? How am I to save her?

How am I to get my freedom? How long am I to wait?"

The Sibyl sank her head upon her breast so that her nose and chin quite disappeared, and she stood before them like some furry headless beast.

There was a long pause. Alwin nervously followed the pairs of eyes, noiselessly appearing and disappearing, from floor to ceiling, in every part of the room. Sigurd set his back against the door and carried on a silent struggle with the heavy lumps, hanging by teeth and claws upon his cloak.

At last Skroppa raised her head and answered haltingly: "You ask too much, according to the time and the place. To know all that clearly, I should sit on a witches' platform and eat witches' broth, and have women stand about me and sing weird songs. Without music, spirits do not like to help. I can only see bits, vaguely as through a fog... I see your body lying on the ground I see a ship where never ship was seen before I see--I see Leif Ericsson standing upon earth where never man stood before. It seems to me that I read great luck in his face... And I see you standing beside him, though you do not look as you look now, for your hair is long and black. The light is so bright that I cannot...

Yes, one thing more is open to my sight. I see that it is in this new land that it will be settled whether your luck is to be good or bad."

She stopped. They waited for her to go on; but soon it became evident that the foretelling was finished. With all his prudence, Sigurd began to laugh; and Alwin burst out in a pa.s.sion of impatience: "For which, you gabbler? For which? I can make nothing of such jargon. Tell me in plain words whether it will be for good or ill."

Skroppa answered just one word: "Jargon!"

Alwin stormed on unheeding, but Sigurd's laughter stopped: something in the tone of that one word chilled his blood and braced his muscles like a frost. He strained his eyes to pierce the shadow and make out what she was doing; and it seemed to him that he could no longer see her. She had disappeared,--where? In a sudden panic he groped behind him for the door; found it and flung it open. It was well that the moon was shining at that moment.

"Alwin!" he shouted. The yellow face was close to the thrall's unconscious shoulder; one evil claw-like hand was almost at his cheek.

What she would have done, she alone knew.

While his cry was still in the air, Sigurd pulled his companion away and through the door. Up the steep they went like cats. Near the top, Alwin tripped, and his knife slipped from his belt and fell against a boulder.

It lay there shining, but neither of them noticed it. Into their skees, and over the crusted plains they went,--reindeer could not have caught them.

CHAPTER XIX

TALES OF THE UNKNOWN WEST

Fire is needful To him who is come in, And whose knees are frozen; Food and raiment A man requires Who o'er the fell has travelled.

Ha'vama'l

"I tell you I must go over the track once more. It may have slipped out of my girdle at some of the places where I tripped."

Alwin's words rose in frosty cloud; for he was Leif's unheated sleeping-room, drawing on an extra pair of thick woollen stockings in preparation for his customary outing.

"It is foolishness. Four times already have you been over the ground without finding it. A long bra.s.s-halted knife could not have been overlooked if it had been there. I tell you that you lost it among the rocks of the hollow, and that you would be wise to give it up."

Sigurd's answer came in m.u.f.fled though emphatic tones, for he was huddled almost out of sight among the furs on the chest, as he waited for his companion to complete his dressing. Now that genuine winter weather was upon them, the loft was necessarily abandoned as a sleeping apartment; but it still served as a dressing-room for such slight and speedy alterations as were attempted.

As he pulled on the big heelless skeeing-shoes, Alwin sighed anxiously.

"I must find it. Any day Leif may miss it and ask."

"He is not likely to, since he has already gone a week without noticing its absence. And if he should, you have only to say that you borrowed it to protect yourself from wolves. That will not be much of a lie, Skroppa being nearer wolf than human. He will feel that he was wrong to have denied you a weapon, and he will only scold a little."

"It is true that he is in a good temper again," Alwin admitted.

"Yesterday I heard Tyrker tell Valbrand that many more chiefs had asked concerning Christianity; and last night, after Eric had gone to sleep in his seat, I heard Leif say to Thorhild that if now he could only do some great deed to prove the power of his G.o.d, it was his opinion that half of Greenland would be ready to believe."

Sigurd crept out of the bearskins with a shiver. "I say nothing against that. But let us end this talk. My blood-drops are so frozen they rattle in my body."

He thumped down the steps as though rigid with cold, and jumped and danced and beat his breast before he could bring himself to stand still long enough to fasten on his skees.

"Where shall we go, then?" Alwin asked, as they glided out of the gate in the dim light of an Arctic winter day. "It may be that to go over that road again might become a misfortune. Once I saw Kark looking after us with a grin which I would have knocked off his face if I had not been in a hurry."

Sigurd instantly faced toward the snow-crusted hills that lay between them and Eric's Fiord. "Then to-day it will be useful to go in another direction, so that any suspicions he has may go to sleep again. If Thorhall had been at home, he would have overtaken you before this. His green eyes are well fitted for spying."

Perhaps it was this reference to green eyes that recalled to Alwin the scene of the foretelling. Perhaps it had never gone very far out of his mind.

After they had swung along a while in silent enjoyment of the swift motion and the answering tingle in their blood, he said abruptly: "It may be that there was some truth at her tongue-roots, after all."

Sigurd made a sly move with his staff, so that the other suddenly tripped and fell headlong; whereupon he said gravely: "Lo, I believe so too, for behold, already it has come true that 'I see your body lying on the ground.'"

Alwin consented to laugh, as he picked himself up and untangled his runners; but he was too much in earnest to be turned aside.

"I do not mean in regard to that," he said, when they were once more in motion. "I mean what she told concerning some new untrodden land."

Sigurd became instantly attentive, as though the reference had been much in his own mind also.

"It has occurred to me that perhaps she was speaking of that western land you told me of. It might be that this would be a way out of my difficulties. If I could escape to that land with Helga, so would I at once save her and gain my freedom."

Sigurd's eyes brightened, then gloomed again. "Yes,--but that 'if' is like a mile-wide rift in the ice. You can never get over it."

"It might be that I could get around it. I tell you I shall go out of my wits if I cannot see some trail to follow, no matter how faint it is.

Tell me what else you know of this land."

They were starting down a slope at the speed of the wind, but Sigurd suddenly leaped into the air with a cheer; and cheered again as he landed, right-side up and unstaggered, at the bottom of the hill.

"By Michael, I will do better than that! I will take you to talk with one of Biorn's own men. One is visiting Aran Bow-Bender now, across the fiord. I heard Brand Knutsson say so last week."

"By my troth, Sigurd," Alwin cried eagerly, "when things come to one's hand like that, I believe it is a sign that he should try his luck with them! Would we have time to go there to-day?"

"Certainly; do you not see that the light is only just fading from the mountain tops? so it can be but a little past noon. The only difficulty is that the ice may not be in a condition for us to cross the fiord. A warm land-wind has been blowing for three days; and even in the North, where the seal-hunters go, the ice often breaks up under them. But now allow me to get my bearings. That is the smoke from Brattahlid, behind us; and yonder I see the roofs of Eric's ship-sheds. Here,--we will go in this direction until we come to a high point of the bank."

Across the white plain that stretched in that direction, they skimmed accordingly. Once they came upon a herd of Eric's reindeer, rooting under the snow for moss; but aside from that, they saw no living thing.

Low-hanging gray clouds seemed to have shut out the world. Now and then, from far out in the open water came the grinding and crunching of huge ice-cakes, see-sawing past each other. Once there sounded the reverberating thunder of two icebergs in a duel.

"If there were any bears on that ice, they have found by this time that there can be even worse things than men with spears," Sigurd observed, as he listened.

It is doubtful whether Alwin had heard the noise at all. He answered, absently: "Yes,--and if we do not wish to come to the subject at once, we can say that we are cold and dropped in to warm ourselves."

"To say that we are cold will always be truthfully spoken," Sigurd a.s.sented, his teeth chattering like beads. "I do not believe that Stark-Otter was much chillier when he pulled off his clothes and sat in a snow-bank."