eyes on him and the maid, he said to her: "Come, Elsalill, I will
take you home. I would not that any should see you had come to the
tavern for me."

Then Elsalill looked up, as though suddenly calling to mind that
she had another duty to perform than that of listening to Sir
Archie. But her heart smote her when she thought of betraying his
crime. "If you deliver him to the hangman, I must break," her
heart said to her. And Sir Archie drew the girl's cloak more
tightly about her and led her out into the street. He walked with
her all the way to Torarin's cabin, and she noticed that whenever
the storm blew fiercely in their faces, he placed himself before
her and screened her.

Elsalill thought, all the time they were walking: "My dead foster
sister knew nothing of this, that he would atone for his crime and
become a good man."

Sir Archie still whispered the tenderest words in Elsalill's ear.
And the longer she listened to him, the more firmly she believed
in him.

"It must have been that I might hear Sir Archie whisper such words
as these in my ear that my foster sister called me forth," she
thought. "She loves me so dearly. She desires not my unhappiness
but my happiness."

And as they stopped before the cabin, Sir Archie asked Elsalill
once more whether she would go with him across the sea. And
Elsalill answered that with God's help she would go.