"Sweetest lady, I am not out of my wits. It is the truth, the blessed truth. Mine own eyes have proved it. Four times has Thorhild sent me on errands to Egil's house, and each time have I seen--"

"Yet said nothing to me! You have let me suffer!"

"No, no, spare me your reproaches! How was it possible for me to do otherwise? If you had known, all would have suspected; 'A woman's eyes cannot hide it when she loves.' Sigurd Haraldsson bound me firmly. I was told only because it was necessary that I should carry their messages.

It has torn my heart to let you grieve. Only love for him could have kept me to it. Believe it, and forgive me. Say that you forgive me!"

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."

"Since you do not remember where it is, I will walk with you, if it is not against your wish." He shouted some final directions to the men in the field, then leaped over the fence and strode along beside her.

He appeared to have nothing to say, after they were once started, and they went through lane and pasture and field in silence. But as soon as she broke out with fresh praise for his kindness, he found his tongue in all its curt vigor.

"Enough has been said about that. I have been wishing to speak to you of something that happened at the feast the other night. Do you know that my kinswoman Astrid told Gilli of her wish to buy your bondwoman, and--"

For a moment there was something wolfish about Helga's white teeth. She struck in quickly: "Yes, I know. Gilli agreed to sell Editha to her, the day we sail. It is exactly what I expected of him. If Astrid should offer a little more, he would be apt to sell me. He is the lowest-minded--Bah!" It seemed as though words failed her. She threw her hands apart in a gesture of utter detestation. The glow was gone out of her face.

"What I wanted to say is, that if it is your wish, I will persuade my mother to withdraw her offer."

After a while Helga shook her head. "No. He would only sell her to some one else. It would trouble me to think of her among strangers, and your mother would treat her kindly." She paused, at the top of the stile they were climbing over, to look down at him earnestly. "I should be thankful if you would promise me that, Egil. You are master now, and can have your will about everything. Promise me you will see that she is well treated."

"I promise you." Helga threw a grateful look after him, as he went along before her. "Your word is like a rock, Egil. One could hold on to it though everything else should roll away."

The cloud was pa.s.sing from her face. By the time she gained his side, the rose-garden was once more radiant in sunlight.

"After all, I do not feel that I have a right to let anything grieve me much, since G.o.d has given Alwin back from the dead. I set my mind to thinking of that, and then everything else seems small and easily remedied. Even Gilli's coming it is possible to turn to profit. I have a fine plan--"

She broke off abruptly as, through a clump of white-birch trees, she caught sight of a tiny cabin nestled in their green shelter.

"That is Solveig's house; now I remember it! How is it possible that it has held such a secret for four months, and still looks just as usual?

Let us hurry!" She seized his arm to pull him along. Only when he wrenched away and came to a dead stop, did she slacken her pace to stare at him over her shoulder.

"Do you wish to drive me crazy?" he shouted.

She thought him already so, and drew back.

He waited to take a fresh grip on his self-control. When he spoke at last, it was with labored slowness: "Every week for four months I have come to this door and asked the Englishman how he fared; and he has not wished for anything that I have not given it to him. The night they left him with me, I could have put my fingers around his throat and killed him; and no one would have known. But I held my hands behind me, and allowed him to live. So far, I have kept my oath of friendship. Do you wish me to go in with you and break it now?"

Before she could gather her wits together to answer him, he was gone.

Standing where he had left her, she stared after him, open-mouthed, until her eye fell upon the cabin among the bushes, when she forgot everything else in the world. She ran toward it and threw open the door.

The low room was smoky and badly lighted. Before she could distinguish her lover in the dimness, he was upon her, calling her name over and over, crushing her hands in his. She cried out, and lifted her face, and his lips met hers, warm and living. It was the same as though nothing had happened since last she saw him.

No, not quite the same; she saw that, the instant she drew back. Alwin was very thin, and in the half-light his face showed white and haggard.

An ugly scar stretched half across his forehead. At the sight of it her eyes flashed, and she reached up and touched with her lips the fiery mark.

"How I hate Leif for that!" Then she saw the greatest change of all in him, the quiet grimness that had come upon him out of his nights of pain and days of solitude.

"That is unfairly spoken, sweetheart. I have but paid the price I agreed to pay if luck went against me. Leif has dealt with me only according to justice; that I will maintain, though I die under his sword at the last."

She drew a quick, sharp breath. In the joy of recovery, she had let herself forget that he is only half alive who lives under the shadow of a death sentence. She set her teeth over her lip to stop its trembling, and stiffened herself to the iron composure of a shield-maiden.

"It is true that you are yet in great danger. His anger has not yet departed from him, for not once has your name pa.s.sed his lips. Sit down here and tell me what you think of your case."

Alwin recalled the weeping and fainting of his mother's waiting-women, in that far-off time of trouble, and pressed her hand gratefully as he took his seat by her side upon the bench. "You are my brave comrade as well as my best friend. I can talk with you as I would with Sigurd."

Just for a moment she laid her cheek against his shoulder. "It gladdens me that you are content with me as I am, instead of wishing me to be like Bertha of Trondhjem and other women," she whispered.

Then the memory linked with that name caused her to straighten again and look at him doubtfully. "Has Solveig told you all the latest tidings?"

"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 rea.s.sure 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."