"Moccasins?"
"The little shoes she made for Ellida. And she made a little boat for Peder, like their skiffs."
This was interesting. For a private reason, Thorolf held Greenland to be the most fascinating of all places.
"Can she speak their language?"
"Of course. I asked her to teach me, and she said that perhaps she would some day. The songs that she sings to the little ones are some that the Skroeling woman who adopted her used to sing to her when she cried for her own mother. One of them begins like this:
"'Piche Klooskap pechian Machieswi menikok.'"
"What does it mean?"
"'Long ago Klooskap came to the island of the partridges.' Klooskap was like Odin, or Thor. The priests in Greenland told her he was a devil and wouldn't let her talk about him, but the Skroelings had runes for everything just like the people in the sagas,—runes for war, and healing, and the sea."
"How did she ever get away?"
"Some men came from Westbyrg to cut wood in the forest, and when they saw that she was not really a Skroeling they bought her for an iron pot and one of them married her. But he was drowned a long time ago."