Gradually the green patches became more numerous, until the level was
covered with nothing else. In one place, he almost thought he caught a
gleam of golden buttercups. The verdure crept up the snow-clad slopes,
hundreds and thousands of feet; and here and there, beside some foaming
little cataract tumbling down from a glacier-fed stream, a rhododendron
glowed like a rosy flame. They passed the last island, covered with a
copse of willows as high as a tall man's head, and came into an open
stretch of water bordered by rolling pasture lands, filled with daisies
and mild-eyed cattle. Sigurd clutched the English boy's arm excitedly.

"Yonder are Eric's ship-sheds! And there--over that hill, where the
smoke is rising--there is Brattahlid!"

"There?" exclaimed Alwin. "Now it was in my mind that you had told me
that Eric's house was built on Eric's Fiord."

"So it is,--or two miles from there, which is of little importance. Oh,
yes, it stands on the very banks of Einar's Fiord; but since that is a
route one takes only when he visits the other parts of the settlement,
and seldom when he runs out to sea--Is that a man I see upon the
landing?"

"If they have not already seen us and come down to meet us, their eyes
are less sharp than they were wont to be three years ago," Rolf began;
when Sigurd answered his own question.

"They are there; do you not see? Crowds of them--between the sheds.
Someone is waving a cloak. By Saint Michael, the sight of Normandy did
not gladden me like this!"