In which Alric boasts a little, discovers Secrets, confesses a little, and distinguishes himself greatly.  
Next day there was great bustle at Ulfstede, and along the shores of the fiord, for the men of Horlingdal were busy launching their ships and making preparations to go to the Springs to meet and hold council with King Harald Haarfager.
 
It had been finally resolved, without a dissentient voice, that the whole district should go forth to meet him in arms, and thus ensure fair play at the deliberations of the Thing. Even Haldor no longer objected; but, on the contrary, when he heard his son’s account of his meeting with the King, and of the dastardly attempt that had been made to assassinate him and his friend, there shot across his face a gleam of that wild ferocity which had procured him his title. It passed quickly away, however, and gave place to a look of sad resignation, which assured those who knew him that he regarded their chance of opposing the King successfully to be very small indeed.
 
The fleet that left the fiord consisted of the longships of Ulf, Haldor, Erling, Glumm, and Guttorm, besides an innumerable flotilla of smaller crafts and boats. Many of the men were well armed, not only with first-rate weapons, but with complete suits of excellent mail of the kinds peculiar to the period—such as shirts of leather, with steel rings sewed thickly over them, and others covered with steel scales—while of the poorer bonders and the thralls some wore portions of defensive armour, and some trusted to the thick hides of the wolf, which were more serviceable against a sword-cut than many people might suppose. All had shields, however, and carried either swords, bills, spears, javelins, axes, or bows and arrows, so that, numbering as they did, about a thousand men, they composed a formidable host.
 
While these rowed away over the fiord to the Springs to make war or peace—as the case might be—with King Harald, a disappointed spirit was left behind in Horlingdal.
 
“I’m sure I cannot see why I should not be allowed to go too,” said little Alric, on returning to Haldorstede, after seeing the fleet set forth. “Of course I cannot fight so well as Erling yet, but I can do something in that way; and can even face up to a full-grown man when occasion serves, as that red-haired Dane knows full well, methinks, if he has got any power of feeling in his neck!”
 
This was said to Herfrida, who was in the great hall spreading the board for the midday meal, and surrounded by her maidens, some of whom were engaged in spinning or carding wool, while others wove and sewed, or busied themselves about household matters.
 
“Have patience, my son,” said Herfrida. “Thou art not yet strong enough to go forth to battle. Doubtless, in three or four years—”
 
“Three or four years!” exclaimed Alric, to whom such a space of time appeared an age. “Why, there will be no more fighting left to be done at the end of three or four years. Does not father say that if the King succeeds in his illegal plans all the independence of the small kings will be gone for ever, and—and—of course I am old enough to see that if the small kings are not allowed to do as they please, there will be no more occasion for war—nothing but a dull time of constant peace!”
 
Herfrida laughed lightly, while her warlike son strutted up and down the ancestral hall like a bantam cock, frowning and grunting indignantly, as he brooded over the dark prospects of peace that threatened his native land, and thought of his own incapacity, on account of youth, to make glorious hay while yet the sun of war was shining.
 
“Mother,” he said, stopping suddenly, and crossing his arms, as he stood with his feet planted pretty wide apart, after the fashion of those who desire to be thought very resolute— “mother, I had a dream last night.”
 
“Tell it me, my son,” said Herfrida, sitting down on a low stool beside the lad.
 
Now, it must be known that in those days the Northmen believed in dreams and omens and warnings—indeed, they were altogether a very superstitious people, having perfect faith in giants, good and bad; elves, dark and bright; wraiths, and fetches, and guardian spirits—insomuch that there was scarcely one among the grown-up people who had not seen some of these fabulous creatures, or who had not seen some other people who had either seen them themselves or had seen individuals who said they had seen them! There were also many “clear-sighted” or “fore-sighted” old men and women, who not only saw goblins and supernatural appearances occasionally, and, as it were, accidentally, like ordinary folk, but who also had the gift—so it is said—of seeing such things when they pleased—enjoyed, as it were, an unenviable privilege in that way. It was therefore with unusual interest that Herfrida asked about her son’s dream.
 
“It must have been mara (nightmare), I think,” he said, “for though I never had it before, it seemed to me very like what Guttorm Stoutheart says he always has after eating too hearty a meal.”
 
“Relate it, my son.”
 
“Well, you must know,” said Alric, with much gravity and importance, for he observed that the girls about the room were working softly that they might hear him, “I dreamed that I was out on the fells, and there I met a dreadful wolf, as big as a horse, with two heads and three tails, or three heads and two tails, I mind not which, but it gave me little time to notice it, for, before I was aware, it dashed at me, and I turned to run, but my feet seemed to cleave to the earth, and my legs felt heavy as lead, so that I could scarce drag myself along, yet, strange to say, the wolf did not overtake me, although I heard it coming nearer and nearer every moment, and I tried to shout, but my voice would not come out.”
 
“What hadst thou to supper last night?” asked Herfrida.
 
“Let me think,” replied the boy meditatively; “I had four cuts of salmon, three rolls of bread and butter, half a wild-duck, two small bits of salt-fish, some eggs, a little milk, and a horn of ale.”
 
“It must have been mara,” said she, thoughtfully; “but go on with thy dream.”
 
“Well, just as I came to the brink of the river, I looked back and saw the wolf close at my heels, so I dropped suddenly, and the wolf tumbled right over me into the water, but next moment it came up in the shape of another monster with a fish’s tail, which made straight at me. Then it all at once came into my head that my guardian spirit was behind me, and I turned quickly round but did not see it.”
 
“Art thou quite sure of that, my son?”
 
Herfrida asked this in a tone of great anxiety, for to see one’s own guardian spirit was thought unlucky, and a sign that the person seeing it was “fey”, or death-doomed.
 
“I’m quite sure that I did not,” replied Alric, to the manifest relief of his mother; “but I saw a long pole on the ground, which I seized, and attacked the beast therewith, and a most notable fight we had. I only wish that it had been true, and that thou hadst been there to see it. Mara fled away at once, for I felt no more fear, but laid about me in a way that minded me of Erling. Indeed, I don’t think he could have done it better himself. Oh! how I do wish, sometimes, that my dreams would come true! However, I killed the monster at last, and hurled him into the river, after which I felt tossed about in a strange way, and then my senses left me, and then I awoke.”
 
“What thinkest thou of the dream?” said Herfrida to a wrinkled old crone who sat on a low stool beside the fire.
 
The witch-like old creature roused herself a little and said:
 
“Good luck is in store for the boy.”
 
“Thanks for that, granny,” said Alric; “canst say what sort o’ good luck it is?”
 
“No; my knowledge goes no further. It may be good luck in great things, it may be only in small matters; perhaps soon, perhaps a long time hence: I know not.”
 
Having ventured this very safe and indefinite prophecy, the old woman let her chin drop on her bosom, and recommenced the rocking to and fro which had been interrupted by the question; while Alric laughed, and, taking up a three-pronged spear, said that as he had been disappointed in going to see the fun at the Springs, he would console himself by going and sticking salmon at the foss (waterfall).
 
“Wilt thou not wait for midday meal?” said Herfrida.
 
“No, mother; this roll will suffice till night.”
 
“And then thou wilt come home ravening, and have mara again.”
 
“Be it so. I’d run the risk of that for the sake of the chance of another glorious battle such as I had last night!”
 
Saying this the reckless youth sallied forth with the spear or leister on his shoulder, and took the narrow bridle path leading up the glen.
 
It was one of those calm bright days of early autumn in which men feel that they draw in fresh life and vigour at each inhalation. With the fragrant odours that arose from innumerable wild flowers, including that sweetest of plants, the lily of the valley, was mingled the pleasant smell of the pines, which clothed the knolls, or hung here and there like eyebrows on the cliffs. The river was swollen considerably by recent heat, which had caused the great glaciers on the mountain tops to melt more rapidly than usual, and its rushing sound was mingled with the deeper roar of the foss, or waterfall, which leaped over a cliff thirty feet high about two miles up the valley. Hundreds of rills of all sizes fell and zigzagged down the mountains on either side, some of them appearing like threads of silver on the precipices, and all, river and rills, being as cold as the perpetual ice-fields above which gave them birth. Birds twittered in the bushes, adding sweetness to the wild music, and bright greens and purples, lit up by gleams of sunshine, threw a charm of softness over the somewhat rugged scene.
 
The Norse boy’s nature was sensitive, and peculiarly susceptible of outward influences. As he walked briskly along, casting his eager gaze now at the river which foamed below him, and anon at the distant mountain ridges capped with perennial snows, he forgot his late disappointment, or, which is the same thing, drowned it in present enjoyment. Giving vent to his delight, much as boys did a thousand years later, by violent whistling or in uproarious bursts of song, he descended to the river’s edge, with the intention of darting his salmon spear, when his eye caught sight of a woman’s skirt fluttering on one of the cliffs above. He knew that Hilda and Ada had gone up the valley together on a visit to a kinswoman, for Herfrida had spoken of expecting them back to midday meal; guessing, therefore, that it must be them, he drew back out of sight, and clambered hastily up the bank, intending to give them a surprise. He hid himself in the bushes at a jutting point which they had to pass, and from which there was a magnificent view of the valley, the fiord, and the distant sea.
 
He heard the voices of the two girls in animated conversation as they drew near, and distinguished the name of Glumm more than once, but, not being a gossip by nature, he thought nothing of this, and was intent only on pouncing out on them when they should reach a certain stone in the path. Truth constrains us to admit that our young friend, like many young folk of the present day, was a practical joker—yet it must also be said that he was not a very bad one, and, to his honour be it recorded, he never practised jokes on old people!
 
It chanced, however, that the two friends stopped short just before reaching t............