In which Glumm takes to hunting on the Mountains for Consolation, and finds it unexpectedly, while Alric proves himself a Hero.  
“I go to the fells to-day,” said Glumm to Alric one morning, as the latter opened the door of Glummstede and entered the hall.
 
“I go also,” said Alric, leaning a stout spear which he carried against the wall, and sitting down on a stool beside the fire to watch Glumm as he equipped himself for the chase.
 
“Art ready, then? for the day is late,” said Glumm.
 
“All busked,” replied the boy.—“I say, Glumm, is that a new spear thou hast got?”
 
“Aye; I took it from a Swedish viking the last fight I had off the coast. We had a tough job of it, and left one or two stout men behind to glut the birds of Odin, but we brought away much booty. This was part of it,” he added, buckling on a long hunting-knife, which was stuck in a richly ornamented sheath, “and that silver tankard too, besides the red mantle that my mother wears, and a few other things—but my comrades got the most of it.”
 
“I wish I had been there, Glumm,” said Alric.
 
“If Hilda were here, lad, she would say it is wrong to wish to fight.”
 
“Hilda has strange thoughts,” observed the boy.
 
“So has Erling,” remarked his companion.
 
“And so has Ada,” said Alric, with a sly glance.
 
Glumm looked up quickly. “What knowest thou about Ada?” said he.
 
The sly look vanished before Glumm had time to observe it, and an expression of extreme innocence took its place as the lad replied—
 
“I know as much about her as is usual with one who has known a girl, and been often with her, since the day he was born.”
 
“True,” muttered Glumm, stooping to fasten the thongs that laced the untanned shoes on his feet. “Ada has strange thoughts also, as thou sayest. Come now, take thy spear, and let us be gone.”
 
“Where shall we go to-day?” asked Alric.
 
“To the wolf’s glen.”
 
“To the wolf’s glen? that is far.”
 
“Is it too far for thee, lad?”
 
“Nay, twice the distance were not too far for me,” returned the boy proudly; “but the day advances, and there is danger without honour in walking on the fells after dark.”
 
“The more need for haste,” said Glumm, opening the door and going out.
 
Alric followed, and for some time these two walked in silence, as the path was very steep, and so narrow for a considerable distance, that they could not walk abreast.
 
Snow lay pretty thickly on the mountains, particularly in sheltered places, but in exposed parts it had been blown off, and the hunters could advance easily. In about ten minutes after setting out they lost sight of Glummstede. As they advanced higher and deeper into the mountains, the fiord and the sea, with its innumerable skerries, was lost to view, but it was not until they had toiled upwards and onwards for nearly two hours that they reached those dark recesses of the fells to which the bears and wolves were wont to retreat after committing depredations on the farms in the valleys far below.
 
There was something in the rugged grandeur of the scenery here, in the whiteness of the snow, the blackness of the rocks which peeped out from its voluminous wreaths, the lightness of the atmosphere, and, above all, the impressive silence, which possessed an indescribable charm for the romantic mind of Alric, and which induced even the stern matter-of-fact Glumm to tread with slower steps, and to look around him with a feeling almost akin to awe. No living thing was to be seen, either among the stupendous crags which still towered above, or in the depths which they had left below; but there were several footprints of wolves, all of which Glumm declared, after careful examination, to be old.
 
“See here, lad,” he said, turning up one of these footprints with the butt of his spear; “observe the hardish ball of snow just under the print; that shows that the track is somewhat old. If it had been quite fresh there would have been no such ball.”
 
“Thou must think my memory of the shortest, Glumm, for I have been told that every time I have been out with thee.”
 
“True, but thou art so stupid,” said Glumm, laying his spear lightly across the boy’s shoulders, “that I have thought fit to impress it on thee by repetition, having an interest in thine education, although thou dost not deserve it.”
 
“I deserve it, mayhap, more than ye think.”
 
“How so, boy?”
 
“Why, because I have for a long time past taken an uncommon interest in thy welfare.”
 
Glumm laughed, and said he did not know that there was any occasion to concern himself about his welfare.
 
“Oh yes, there is!” cried Alric, “for, when a man goes moping about the country as if he were fey, or as if he had dreamed of seeing his own guardian spirit, his friends cannot help being concerned about him.”
 
“Why, what is running in the lad’s head?” said Glumm, looking with a perplexed expression at his young companion.
 
“Nothing runs in my head, save ordinary thoughts. If there be any unusual running at all, it must be in thine own.”
 
“Speak, thou little fox,” said Glumm, suddenly grasping Alric by the nape of the neck and giving him a shake.
 
“Nay then, if that is thy plan,” said the boy, “give it a fair trial. Shake away, and see what comes of it. Thou mayest shake out blood, bones, flesh, and life too, and carry home my skin as a trophy, but be assured that thou shalt not shake a word off my tongue!”
 
“Boldly spoken,” said Glumm, laughing, as he released the lad; “but I think thy tone would change if I were to take thee at thy word.”
 
“That it would not. Thou art not the first man whom I have defied, aye, and drawn blood from, as that red-haired Dane—”
 
Alric stopped suddenly. He had reached that age when the tendency to boast begins, at least in manly boys, to be checked by increasing good sense and good taste. Yet it is no disparagement of Alric’s character to say that he found it uncommonly difficult to refrain, when occasion served, from making reference to his first warlike exploit, even although frequent rebukes and increasing wisdom told him that boasting was only fit for the lips of cowards.
 
“Why do ye stop?” asked Glumm, who quite understood the boy’s feelings, and admired his exercise of self-control.
 
“Be—because I have said enough.”
 
“Good is it,” observed the other, “when man or boy knows that he has said enough, and has the power to stop when he knows it. But come, Alric, thou hast not said enough to me yet on the matter that—that—”
 
“What matter?” asked Alric, with a sly look.
 
“Why, the matter of my welfare, to be sure.”
 
“Ah, true. Well, methinks, Glumm, that I could give thee a little medicine for thy mind, but I won’t, unless ye promise to keep thy spear off my back.”
 
“I promise,” said Glumm, whose curiosity was aroused.
 
“It is a sad thing when a man looks sweet and a maid looks sour, but there is a worse thing; that is when the maid feels sour. Thou lovest Ada—”
 
“Hold!” cried Glumm, turning fiercely on his companion, “and let not thy pert tongue dare to speak of such things, else will I show thee that there are other things besides spears to lay across thy shoulders.”
 
“Now art thou truly Glumm the Gruff,” cried Alric, laughing, as he leaped to the other side of a mass of fallen rock; “but if thy humour changes not, I will show thee that I am not named Lightfoot for nothing. Come, don’t fume and fret there like a bear with a headache, but let me speak, and I warrant me thou wilt be reasonably glad.”
 
“Go on, then, thou incorrigible.”
 
“Very well; but none of thy hard names, friend Glumm, else will I set my big brother Erling at thee. There now, don’t give way again. What a storm-cloud thou art! Will the knowledge that Ada loves thee as truly as thou lovest her calm thee down?”
 
“I see thou hast discovered my secret,” said Glumm, looking at his little friend with a somewhat confused expression, “though how the knowledge came to thee is past my understanding. Yet as thou art so clever a warlock I would fain know what ye mean about ‘Ada’s love for me.’ Hadst thou said her hatred, I could have believed thee without explanation.”
 
“Let us go on, then,” said Alric, “for there is nothing to be gained and only time to be lost by thus talking across a stone.”
 
The path which they followed was broad at that part, and not quite so rugged, so that Alric could walk alongside of his stout friend as he related to him the incident that was the means of enlightening him as to Ada’s feelings towards her lover. It was plain from the expression on the Norseman’s face that his soul was rejoiced at the discovery, and he strode forward at such a pace that the boy was fain to call a halt.
 
“Thinkest thou that my legs are as long as thine?” he said, stopping and panting.
 
Glumm laughed; and the laugh was loud and strong. He would have laughed at anything just then, for the humour was upon him, and he felt it difficult to repress a shout at the end of it!
 
“Come on, Alric, I will go slower. But art thou sure of all this? Hast not mistaken the words?”
 
“Mistaken the words!” cried the boy; “why, I tell thee they were as plain to my ears and my senses as what thou hast said this moment.”
 
“Good,” said Glumm; “and now the question comes up, how must I behave to her? But thou canst not aid me herein, for in such matters thou hast had no experience.”
 
“Out upon thee for a stupid monster!” said the boy; “have I not just proved that my experience is very deep? I have not, indeed, got the length thou hast—of wandering about like a poor ghost or a half-witted fellow, but I have seen enough of such matters to know what common sense says.”
 
“And, pray, what does common sense say?”
 
“Why, it says, Act towards the maid like a sane man, and, above all, a true man. Don’t go about the land gnashing thy teeth until everyone laughs at thee. Don’t go staring at her in grim silence as if she were a wraith; and, more particularly, don’t pretend to be fond of other girls, for thou didst make a pitiful mess of that attempt. In short, be Glumm without being Gruff, and don’t try to be anybody else. Be kind and st............