cliff, a mass of rock juts up called Sheep-saddle, dividing the waters
of the fall, and over this the spray flies, and in winter the ice
gathers, but the river does not cover it. The great fall is thirty
fathoms deep, and shaped like a horseshoe, of which the points lie
towards Middalhof. Yet if he could but gain the Sheep-saddle rock that
divides the midst of the waters, a strong and hardy man might climb down
some fifteen fathoms of this depth and scarcely wet his feet.

Now here at the foot of Sheep-saddle rock the double arches of waters
meet, and fall in one torrent into the bottomless pool below. But, some
three fathoms from this point of the meeting waters, and beneath
it, just where the curve is deepest, a single crag, as large as a
drinking-table and no larger, juts through the foam, and, if a man could
reach it, he might leap from it some twelve fathoms, sheer into the
spray-hidden pit beneath, there to sink or swim as it might befall. This
crag is called Wolf's Fang.

Now Eric stood for a long while on the edge of the fall and looked,
measuring every thing with his eye. Then he went up above, where the
river swirls down to the precipice, and looked again, for it is from
this bank that the dividing island-rock Sheep-saddle must be reached.

"A man may hardly do this thing; yet I will try it," he said to himself
at last. "My honour shall be great for the feat, if I chance to live,
and if I die--well, there is an end of troubling after maids and all
other things."

So he went home and sat silent that evening. Now, since Thorgrimur
Iron-Toe's death, his housewife, Saevuna, Eric's mother, had grown dim
of sight, and, though she peered and peered again from her seat in the