habits, which made their noblest men not ashamed to go on voyages of
merchandise. Nor is it, again, that grim humour--humour as of the modern
Scotch--which so often flashes out into an actual jest, but more usually
underlies unspoken all their deeds. Is it not rather that these men are
our forefathers? that their blood runs in the veins of perhaps three men
out of four in any general assembly, whether in America or in Britain?
Startling as the assertion may be, I believe it to be strictly true.

Be that as it may, I cannot read the stories of your western men, the
writings of Bret Harte, or Colonel John Hay, for instance, without
feeling at every turn that there are the old Norse alive again, beyond
the very ocean which they first crossed, 850 years ago.

Let me try to prove my point, and end with a story, as I began with one.

It is just thirty years before the Norman conquest of England, the
evening of the battle of Sticklestead. St. Olaf's corpse is still lying
unburied on the hillside. The reforming and Christian king has fallen in
the attempt to force Christianity and despotism on the Conservative and
half-heathen party--the free bonders or yeoman-farmers of Norway.
Thormod, his poet--the man, as his name means, of thunder mood--who has
been standing in the ranks, at last has an arrow in his left side. He
breaks off the shaft, and thus sore wounded goes up, when all is lost, to
a farm where is a great barn full of wounded. One Kimbe comes, a man out
of the opposite or bonder part. "There is great howling and screaming in
there," he says. "King Olaf's men fought bravely enough: but it is a
shame brisk young lads cannot bear their wounds. On what side wert thou
in the fight?" "On the best side," says the beaten Thormod. Kimbe sees
that Thormod has a good bracelet on his arm. "Thou art surely a king's
man. Give me thy gold ring and I will hide thee, ere the bonders kill