for your bad luck."

"I give you thanks," answered Helga, with her friendly smile. "Where
have the other men gone? I wished to speak with Sigurd."

"They have gone to the landing-place, to watch for a ship that Valbrand
sighted this morning from the rocks."

She cried out joyfully: "A ship in Einar's Fiord? Then it belongs to
some chief of the settlement, who is returning from a Viking voyage!
There will be a fine feast made to welcome him."

Alwin followed her doubtfully up the lane between the white patches. "Is
it likely that that will do us any good? It is possible that Leif will
not be invited."

The heat of her scorn was like to have dried the drops she was
scattering. "You are out of your senses. Do you think men who trade
among the Christians are so little-minded as Eric? Leif is known to be a
man of renown, and the friend of Olaf Trygvasson. They will be proud to
sit at table with him."

"It may be that he will refuse to feast with heathens."

"That is possible," Helga admitted. She emptied her pan with a little
flirt of impatience, and sighed. "How tiresome everything is! To sit at
a table where one is afraid to move lest there be a fight! I speak the
truth when I say that this is the merriest diversion I have,--standing
out here, watering linen, and watching who comes and goes. And now that
my pan is empty, I must betake myself indoors again. Yonder is Valbrand