Hallvard and Hallmund ran with all haste away along the cliffs, but Rolf set out across the valley to the little farm.

CHAPTER XXX
OF THE SAYING OF THOSE TWO WORDS

Now the tale turns to speak of Einar and his two children: how they went away from their home with but the clothes on their backs, and with purses nigh empty, and but little jewelry. They came to the hut, to make a home where there was no room for a fourth to sleep, and where there was but a rack of dried meat, and a gray cloak hanging by the door, and little else for comfort.

Grani looks about the farm, and sees how it has a good spring, and a small garden well tended, and a pen for the ewe. Beyond the garden were the other crops; yet the hay had not been cut, nor the grain reaped, and there was nothing stored against the winter.

Said Grani: "Rolf awaited this turn of fortune, and why should he lay up food for us?"

Then he turned about, and looked off from the hillside. There he saw Cragness, and the folk feasting; and he saw Fellstead and many other farms. There lay Broadfirth, and the sea beyond; fishing vessels were thereon. And he saw the ferry to Hvamm, with all the four roads which led to it, where people travelled; but the little farm was far away from all these things. Now it was a bright warm day, and the ewe bleated in the pasture, and the birds called each other above his head.

Then Grani's heart fainted within him, and he cried to Einar: "Better hadst thou chosen exile for us all, rather than condemn us to die in this place!"

Einar sought to excuse himself to his son, but appeased him not. Then Helga said: "Is this all thou didst learn in the Orkneys, thus to meet the fate which thou hast brought upon thyself?"

Then Grani was quiet, and went and fetched water, and wood which was there for the cooking (but there was no great store). After a while he said to his sister, "No more will I complain, though worse things come upon us."

So in the following days he sets himself to work, and cuts the hay, and stacks it in ricks; and cuts and stacks the grain likewise, working hastily lest the snow should come. Einar was of no account in such work, for his body was not used to it; but he watches the ewe upon the mead, and fetches water; and Helga works at the house, and when the grain is reaped she begins to grind it in a handmill; a slow labor that was, to make flour each day for their bread. Now when Grani had finished harvesting he began to cut peat and stack it near the house. It was hard work, for the cold was severe and the ground freezing.