streams of fire pouring down their glens."

"A most marvellous country!" exclaimed Alpin. "I wonder much if I shall
ever behold that land."

"There you will have no such lordly feast as that we have just risen
from," added Roderic, picking his teeth with his broad thumbnail.

Alpin and Allan watched him, hoping he would tell them something of his
roving life. Roderic, finding that he could not easily dislodge the
piece of meat from betwixt his teeth, picked up a twig of pine wood from
the hearth, and took from the table the large knife with which his
brother had carved the venison, and as he began to sharpen the little
twig to a point he continued:

"No roasted beef there nor venison, but good tough whale flesh, black as
a peat, or else a few candle ends -- for the Icelanders are fond of fat.
Once when I was ship-broken on their coasts naught could my shipmates
find to eat but reasty butter. Disliking that alone, we took our ship's
cable, that was made of walrus hide, and smearing the cable with butter
we bolted morsels of it, by which means we managed to exist for fourteen
days.

"There," he said, finishing his toothpick, "that will serve. 'Tis
strange, is it not, Master Alpin, what a piece of steel can do?"

And then, first looking at its point, he laid the long knife carelessly
upon the shelf above the hearth.

"Why, in Norway, where I have also been, your man can take his knife and