"It looks to me," he said, "as if Frey was half-way to be a Christian. Not only will he have no bloodshed, but all his works are those of mercy. He heals the sick, comforts the fatherless, gives sight to the blind, sets captives free! There is something in all this which I cannot fathom. But let me tell you that baptism of a heathen god would be a thing to root the true faith in the rock, as it should be. Then it would stand fast for ever."
Some said one thing, and some another. But Sigurd Helming looked down at his finger-nails with his brows drawn up very high, and said nothing at all.
He was so pointedly silent that the king observed it. "Well," he asked him, "and what are you thinking to see in your finger-nails?"
Sigurd held up the forefinger of one hand. "There is a white fleck in this one," he said, "which warns me of a stranger in Sweden."
"Well," said King Olaf, "and that is true to report. What next?"
"Sir," said Sigurd, "a stranger to my knowledge went into Sweden a year ago, and has not been heard of as coming out again. That was my brother Gunnar, who went for a good reason."
The king frowned. "You did no service to this country when you warned him of my anger."
"Sir," Sigurd said, "I know that. But I was very sure then that he had no part in Halward's slaughter, and I believe that you had an inkling of how the case stood. Otherwise you had not kept me on your council, but had expelled me the realm."
"Well," said the king, "what I have heard since has softened my resentment; but I know nothing. What makes you see the mind of Gunnar in these heathen doings?"
"The knowledge I have of his mind," said Sigurd. "He is a merry man and a mild-mannered man until he is vexed. Now, he never would sacrifice beasts to the gods in the old days when the gods required it. And he always said that it was better to kill a man outright than to keep him in chains or darkness. These are two reasons. Lastly, if it is true that Frey had a woman for his wife, I believe that Gunnar has her now, and that the next miracle of Frey's we hear about will be that she is to give him a child."