Other captains, less wise, came after Leif in their timber-hunting, and not all came safely home again. Perhaps the good fortune that still followed the guardian of the Iron Star had something to do with Leif and Ulf's fair voyaging in this, the first time that a part of the Star ever came to the shores of America. If so, then indeed its power must have lived long after Ulf had said farewell and swept onward in his own ship toward Norway once again; for by all his friends the tall captain was called "Leif the Lucky."
And even now, in the entrance to a beautiful park in a great city of that land where he went timber-cutting a thousand years before that city—Boston—was ever heard of, there, high in air, as though still standing on the prow of his ship, looms up a brave figure in bronze. A closeknit, flexible shirt of mail guards his form. One hand rests upon his hip, holding his curved war-horn. The other shades the eyes;—for, even in this statue of him, Leif Ericsson is still the crosser of far seas, the finder of strange lands, the sleepless watcher forever gazing from beneath his shadowed brows into the golden west.
SPARK VII.
HOW THE STAR HELPED ULF THE SILENT TO WIN A GREAT NAME.
Back at the fjord, what happened to Edith Fairhair while Ulf was on the ocean? Apparently nothing worth recording. Yet something had happened, so silently, so stealthily that no one gave the matter a thought. What was it? Why, Edith Fairhair had grown up!
She was now a tall maiden, straight as a poplar tree. Hers was now the hand to rule in her sweet lady-mother's place when work bore heavily on the shoulders now weary with many years. She it was who now directed the household thralls and saw that their tasks were well done. Did they not understand their business? Then hers was the hand to show them how, be it spinning, weaving, milking, washing, sweeping, dusting, or any other household art.
In the kitchen it seemed to the servants that all the pots and kettles were bewitched when young Edith stood before them, for the water never refused to boil nor the wood to burn, nor the roast to cook thoroughly and tender. And she had so deft a way of first thinking out what new things would be likely to go well together, and then mixing things that no one ever thought of mixing before, which yet turned into the most delightful dishfuls, that the sea-kings who dined with Sigurd jestingly declared that but one thing prevented some one's making war on him in hope of capturing Edith for himself, and that was the surety that if he won he then would have to fight all the others!
But one morning the sun had just begun glinting past the pines, and had turned all the dewdrops into dancing jewels, as Edith stepped to the door and flung it open to admit the fresh morning air. As it swung she found herself face to face with a browned, bright-eyed young man, clad in mail that rippled in the sunlight radiance.
"Ulf!"
"Edith!"