of my foes, and many a widow have I left desolate."

He paused, and a tongue of flame shot suddenly from the fire and
cast a bright light in the cell.

"Fire!" cried the old man--"fire like that have I brought on my
foes! I have burned them like rats; I have left their homesteads
smouldering! Listen, Vandrad, and I shall tell thee of a deed that
made my name known throughout all the Northland. Now," he added,
"I am a Christian man, and my soul is safe with Christ.

"Once I received an injury I swore I should avenge. Hakon, King of
Sogn, a proud man and a stern, banished my brother Kolskegg for
manslaughter. The deed was but an act of justice on one who had
beguiled our kinswoman; but the dead man had many friends, and the
king hearkened neither to Kolskegg's offers of atonement nor to my
petitions--to mine, who had never asked aught of mortal man
before! My brother was a dear friend of the king, foster-father
even to his eldest son Olaf, and he weakly bowed his head and left
the land. When I heard that he had gone, I pressed my sword-hilt
so tightly in my rage that the blood dripped from my nails, and I
cursed him aloud for idly suffering such insult to our house to
pass without revenge. Our race is as old and proud as the kings of
Sogn themselves, and I vowed that Hakon should rue that day. I was
a heathen then, Vandrad."

He said these last words with a gleam in his eyes and a tightening
of his lips, as if he gloated over the memory of his bygone faith.
With the same grim reminiscent pleasure, he went on: "I and two
others sent the cloven arrow through the dales, and gathered armed