runs the track, sure enough, and, as I thought, the brute has a split
claw; the snow marks it well. Bid the thrall stay with the horses and
come you."

They obeyed, and there on the white snow which lay beyond the bush we
saw the track of the bear stamped as if in wax.

"A mighty beast," said Ragnar. "Never have I seen its like."

"Aye," exclaimed Steinar, "but an ill place to hunt it in," and he
looked doubtfully at the rough gorge, covered with undergrowth, that
some hundred yards farther on became dense birch forest. "I think it
would be well to ride back to Aar, and return to-morrow morning with all
whom we can gather. This is no task for three spears."

By this time I, Olaf, was springing from rock to rock up the gorge,
following the bear's track. For my brother's taunts rankled in me and I
was determined that I should kill this beast or die and thus show Ragnar
that I feared no bear. So I called back to them over my shoulder:

"Aye, go home, it is wisest; but I go on for I have never yet seen one
of these white ice-bears alive."

"Now it is Olaf who taunts in his turn," said Ragnar with a laugh. Then
they both sprang after me, but always I kept ahead of them.

For the half of a mile or more they followed me out of the scrub into
the birch forest, where the snow, lying on the matted boughs of the
trees and especially of some firs that were mingled with the birch, made
the place gloomy in that low light. Always in front of me ran the huge