"May they lie in darkness for ever as dastards and traitors!" he would cry, or "A shrewd scheme, by the hammer of Thor! An I were fifty years younger I would have done the same myself, Helgi!" and then again, "Trolls take me, if this be not enough to make a bear laugh! What next, Helgi?"
When his son had finished his relation of the visit to the old seer, he seemed lost in thought.
"Atli, Atli," he repeated. "Call you him Atli? I cannot remember the name. A friend of Olaf Hakonson, said he? I knew of no such friend. Yet it seems that he spoke indeed as one who had taken counsel with the gods; and if his words acted, as you say, like medicine on Estein, his name matters little. Yet it is passing strange."
When they reached Hakonstad, Helgi found that many chiefs had already arrived to take part in the funeral rites and, more particularly, in the feast with which they always ended. It was not till almost all had gone to rest that Estein returned, and then he went straight to his bed-chamber without exchanging more than the barest greetings with those he found still talking low over their ale around the fires.
The next day was spent in preparations for the solemn ceremonies of pyre and mound, and the great feast which should mark the reigning of another king in Sogn. The young king himself went about bravely, seeing to everything but speaking little. Helgi watched him anxiously, for he feared greatly that this new sorrow might cloud his mind afresh. In the evening he noticed him slip from the hall by himself, and rising at once he followed him out and came to his side as he paced slowly up the night-hushed valley.
"Is my company unwelcome?" he asked.
"More welcome than my thoughts," said Estein, taking his arm.
"Have the black thoughts returned?"
"Do what I will, they are with me again," replied Estein. "My father has died with Olaf unavenged, and now it is too late to keep my sacred word to him that I would ever follow up the feud. King Hakon already sits in Valhalla, and knows his son for a dastard and a breaker of his oaths. While he lived I always told myself that I would find some way even yet by which I might fulfil my promise, but now it is too late. It is hard, Helgi, to lose at once both a father and a father's regard."
"King Hakon is with Odin," said Helgi, "and knows what he has ordained. Odin has not told you to cross the seas for naught, and doubtless King Hakon even now awaits the issue. Never did man do much with a downcast mind; so first dismiss your thoughts, and then for the Viking path again."