“Ah, ah,” he cried, “that is like the Viking ladies of the olden time! This country where I go and all its boundlessness are mine and thine and all who come alike. And all its wealth and houses. I will go in haste, and when I have found a pretty nest for thee and all of us, I will come with yet more haste, and when the ice comes down take thee to it. And there I shall be king as here. For there every man is as a king. Have not the pleasant travellers told me so?”
“Oh, Christof, I cannot help my fear! Yet thou shalt go!”
“Look at these mighty hands,” he cried passionately, “look at me! Will there be any braver there? Will any outstrip me in the race for gold and all those things they seem to need out there? Am I not great as they who went away to-day? Yet they have conquered that vast world. But a little time—think! but a little waiting—and no more cold or hunger—fear or death. The little harvest and the fish now caught will give ye food for all the while I stay. And when I come again, yea we shall wait God’s word—But when the ice comes down we shall leave it rotting in its bins and go away to happiness. Come! come to our marriage!”
And so they went away with arms entwined, and, singing, came to blind Agra, who married them.
III
TO THE LAND OF THE BRAVE
Then came the day he was to go. They gathered up that money, yet lying on the shore, and put it in his scrip, and all was ready—he in his wolfskin—she in her stole; yet she trembled as with palsy in his arms.
“What? Hast thou changed?” he laughed.
“Ah, ah,” she sighed, “thou art my husband now! I am a wife!”
Tears would not flow she was so terrified. No sob rose in her throat. She only trembled in his arms.
“Ah, this is not the lady of my dreams,” he said. “Come! come! Out with thy shears. Give me a tress for talisman, as the ladies of our Vikings did, and send me forth. Let me not stay. Call me a coward that I go. Come! come!”