Skald."

Next he went to Steinar and once again exclaimed, "Dead!"

For so he looked, indeed, smothered in the blood of the bear and with
his garments half torn off him. Still, as the words passed Ragnar's lips
he sat up, rubbed his eyes and smiled as a child does when it awakes.

"Are you much hurt?" asked Ragnar.

"I think not," he answered doubtfully, "save that I feel sore and my
head swims. I have had a bad dream." Then his eyes fell on the bear, and
he added: "Oh, I remember now; it was no dream. Where is Olaf?"

"Supping with Odin," answered Ragnar and pointed to me.

Steinar rose to his feet, staggered to where I lay, and stared at me
stretched there as white as the snow, with a smile upon my face and in
my hand a spray of some evergreen bush which I had grasped as I fell.

"Did he die to save me?" asked Steinar.

"Aye," answered Ragnar, "and never did man walk that bridge in better
fashion. You were right. Would that I had not mocked him."

"Would that I had died and not he," said Steinar with a sob. "It is
borne in upon my heart that it were better I had died."

"Then that may well be, for the heart does not lie at such a time. Also
it is true that he was worth both of us. There was something more in him