“That scoundrel!” cried the farmer angrily. “Ay, a scoundrel he was.” And a murmur from those around showed that he had voiced the general feeling. “He duped them all. Not a man but was on his side. I remember him, and his lying sermons and his talk—and I was no wiser than the rest, to doubt my old friend. Ørlygur à Borg, he was a true man, and Sera Ketill that killed him—his own father.... I shan’t forget! And his poor wife, the Danish Lady at Hof—ruined for life. Twenty years now she’s lived at Borg, and never got back to sense nor wit. ’Tis a comfort to think he’ll suffer for it all, or there’s no justice in heaven. The Devil must have marked him from the first—and took and kept him, and best he should. If I met Sera Ketill at the gates of Paradise, I’d turn and go another way.”
And the farmer laughed, pleased with his own wit and confident of his own salvation.
Guest the One-eyed had listened with pale face to the outburst of hatred and scorn. At last he rose heavily to his feet and said:
“It is time a weary man went to his rest.”
The farmer went with him to the barn.
“If you will sleep here,” he said. “Though why you should, with a fine bed waiting, I can’t see.”
“’Tis best to seek a place that’s not above one’s deserts,” said the other mildly. And he added, “Though, for some, it may be hard to find.”
Left to himself, the wanderer lay staring into the darkness. And his lips moved in an inaudible prayer.
“My God, my God—if only I might dare to hope for forgiveness at the last; only one gleam of Thy mercy to lighten my heart. I am weighed down with the burden of my sin, and long has been my penance, but what is all against the evil I have done? Yet I thank Thee, Lord, that I alone am let to suffer; that Thy wrath has not been visited on that innocent child.”