"Wherefore do you bid me farewell?" said Elsalill. "I will gladly
come every evening and help you."

"No, there is no need for you to come after this evening," said
the dead girl. "I have good hope that tonight you will give me
such help that my mission will now be ended."

As they spoke thus Elsalill was already leaning over her work. All
was still for a while, but then she felt a light breath on her
forehead, as when the dead girl had come to her in Torarin's
cabin. She looked up and saw that she was alone. Then she knew
what it was that had felt like a faint breeze upon her face, and
said to herself: "My dead foster sister has kissed my forehead
before she parted from me."

Elsalill now turned to her work and finished it. She rinsed out
all the bowls and tankards and dried them. Then she looked in the
hatch whether any more had been set in there, and finding none she
stood at the hatch and looked out into the tavern.

It was an hour of the day when there was usually little custom in
the cellars. The hostess was absent from her bar and none of her
tapsters was to be seen in the room. The place was empty, save for
three men, who sat at the end of a long table. They were guests,
but they seemed well at their ease, for one of them, who had
emptied his tankard, went to the bar, filled it from one of the
great tuns of ale and wine that stood there, and sat down again to
drink.

Elsalill felt as though she had come here from a strange world.