glass; yet it was not without a certain impressiveness. The hall was so
large that nearly two hundred men could find seats on the two benches
that ran through it from end to end. Its walls were of a symmetry and
massiveness to outlast the wear of centuries; and the interior had even
a certain splendor.

To-night, decked for a feast, it was magnificent to behold. Gay-hued
tapestries covered the sides, along which rows of round shields
overlapped each other like bright painted scales. Over the benches were
laid embroidered cloths; while the floor was strewn with straw until it
sparkled as with a carpet of spun gold. Before the benches, on either
side of the long stone hearth that ran through the centre of the hall,
stood tables spread with covers of flax bleached white as foam. The
light of the crackling pine torches quivered and flashed from gilded
vessels, and silver-covered trenchers, and goblets of rarely beautiful
glass, ruby and amber and emerald green.

"I have nowhere seen a finer hall," Alwin admitted to Sigurd, as they
pushed their way in through the crowd. "If the high-seats were
different, and the fire-place was against the wall, and there were reeds
upon the floor instead of straw, it would not be unlike what my father's
castle was."

"If I were altogether different, would I look like a Saxon maiden also?"
Helga's voice laughed in his ear. She had come in through the women's
door, with Thorhild and a throng of high-born women. Already she was
transformed. A trailing gown of blue made her seem to have grown a head
taller. Bits of finery--a gold belt at her waist, a gold brooch on her
breast, a string of amber beads around the white neck that showed
coquettishly above the snowy kerchief--banished the last traces of the