Hjor-Leif returned home from this excursion still more taciturn and depressed than he had started. Wearing unrest received him with open arms every morning and did not release him from its evil embrace till sleep at night had pity on him.
He set some of his men to get in hay, others he made go out fishing, the rest he kept occupied with the houses. It was an insignificant alleviation of his trouble to see his men busily occupied. For himself he had no patience for anything. On the walks which he now and then took along the coast to assure himself if the pillars had not drifted on shore in his immediate neighbourhood, he was no more accompanied by even the smallest hope.
During these walks Helga was always in his mind. But not openly and consciously—he scarcely had patience enough to think of her in that way. No, secretly and hidden away she lived in his mind. Through memories and reminiscences she was near to him, without his being obliged to face the fact that they were divided from each other by a long distance and a sea of days, and that this separation was due to a stupid and certainly quite groundless foreboding. He carried these memories about very tenderly and cautiously, without any intention of letting them slip quite out of the fog of unconsciousness. As a man dying of thirst sips dew, he cheated himself into a reminiscent happiness. It was a dangerous proceeding. For if he woke from the dream, his agony flung him on the ground in a passion of tears, unworthy of a man, and which, moreover, brought no relief.
Hjor-Leif became at last weary of the sea and shore. He turned his mind against them and made enemies again—evil emptiness and helpless melancholy—Nature's immovable answer to all discontent. So Hjor-Leif became hostile to all things round him. The echo of his own mind met him everywhere and tortured him as only self-inflicted pain can torture.
He extended his lonely wanderings to the wide-stretching pastures, overgrown with spreading coppice-wood, which reached from his point right up to the blue mountains. But also in this region he soon became homeless. His inner want of peace drove all peace around him away.
When winter came, Hjor-Leif sat like a bear in his lair, alone with the fire and his half-share of the nineteen-fathom-long house. It was uncomfortable near him. Therefore his men kept together in their end of the house, even though no fire burned there. They were newly married, and felt neither cold nor dull.
The serfs slunk in now and then, by twos, with fuel for the fire. They shivered, and came hurriedly away from their task, even though Hjor-Leif sat with his head in his hands and did not look at them at all.
Hjor-Leif was poor now. He was so poor that he caught himself longing for the break in the evening's brooding silence, which the serf's coming caused. So poor, that in order not to betray his poverty he showed himself perverse and ungracious towards his old headman, when the latter once overcame his embarrassment and, out of devotion and sympathy, sat with him one evening. Either he was silent with the old man in his own comfortlessness, or he pained him with scornful words and malicious laughter. The old man could not understand how Hjor-Leif had lost all his good temper and indomitable spirits, unless the evil spirits of this strange land had deprived him of them. He could not endure this land where Hjor-Leif, his favourite, had neither living nor dead foes to fight with. There were plenty of wizards and goblins here, as he had himself experienced. There was an unearthly life in the rocks and heights. But these were creatures without value for a man eager for battle. One could not attack them weapon in hand. The sacred iron could only protect one against them, and keep them out of the house.
Hjor-Leif's old headman fought bravely with his fear and discomfort for an obviously bewitched man. But there came an end, and he also gave up Hjor-Leif and let him sit alone by the fire.
For days and nights together the storm and hail beat on the house with howlings and threatening hootings. The winter days were often only an indistinct glimmer. And in the uncanny winter night all evil spirits were loose.