and what we seek," answered the man, adding: "Fear not, we mean him no
harm, but rather good if he is the man we think."

"Wife," called my father, "come hither. Here are men who would know the
story of Steinar, and say that they mean him good."

So my mother came, and the men bowed to her.

"The story of Steinar is short, sirs," she said. "His mother,
Steingerdi, who was my cousin and the friend of my childhood, married
the great chief Hakon, of Agger, two and twenty summers gone. A year
later, just before Steinar was born, she fled to me here, asking shelter
of my lord. Her tale was that she had quarrelled with Hakon because
another woman had crept into her place. Finding that this tale was true,
and that Hakon had treated her ill indeed, we gave her shelter, and here
her son Steinar was born, in giving birth to whom she died--of a broken
heart, as I think, for she was mad with grief and jealousy. I nursed
him with my son Olaf yonder, and as, although he had news of his birth,
Hakon never claimed him, with us he has dwelt as a son ever since. That
is all the tale. Now what would you with Steinar?"

"This Lady. The lord Hakon and the three sons whom that other woman you
tell of bore him ere she died--for after Steingerdi's death he married
her--were drowned in making harbour on the night of the great gale
eighteen days ago."

"That is the day when the bear nearly killed Steinar," I interrupted.

"Well for him, then, young sir, that he escaped this bear, for now, as
it seems to us, he is the lord of all Hakon's lands and people, being