Orme put his head on one side. "I don't care much about your errand. You will get me into hot water with Thorbeorn. Don't I tell you that he is a great man, an old settler and what-not? He knows his forefathers back to Baldur the Beautiful."
"You are telling me what I know already," said Einar, who was rather red, and showed a frown. "My own birth is no such thing. My father was a freedman. Well, I couldn't help that."
"If I am telling you stale news, neighbour," said Orme, "it is only that you may see what I have to tell Thorbeorn."
"Yes, yes, I know," Einar said. "He is a man of rank, and I no such thing. I grant it. But I have money, do you see? I am well off both in ships and credit; my name stands well in the world. And I am young, and he is old. I think I could be useful to Thorbeorn, if he would allow it—and I need not tell you I set no bounds in reason upon what I would put down for the sake of the match."
"Well," said Orme, "I will go and see him."
Gudrid could hear nothing of this until the morning; but then Einar told her what he had arranged with Orme. She now considered herself as pledged to Einar, though she was nothing of the kind. Loyalty to him persuaded her of it, and he found that very sweet, and was touched. They sat close together on the brae; she allowed him her hand, and rested her cheek on his shoulder. Einar, who was an honest young man, began to fear that he was doing wrong to allow it. But he could not resist a word or two for himself. He told her of his birth, saying that his father, Thorgar, of Thorgar's Fell, had been a freedman, but had done well since. "It is right you should know these things," he said.
Gudrid said that it was nothing to her; but Einar warned her that it might be much to her father. He went on: "To you perhaps it is enough that I love you dearly—and to me it is enough. But who knows? Maybe I shall not have the right to talk to you after to-morrow or next day. Now I wish to say this to you, that I shall never look at another woman, and will bind myself to you if you will accept it of me."
She sat erect at that and looked gravely at him. "You ought not to bind yourself," she said, "since I cannot."
"You cannot. I know that," he said. "But I both can and will."
Thereupon he brought out a handful of money from his breast and chose a gold coin of thin soft gold, with the head of a ragged old king on it. He told her where it came from, and how he had had it from a dead man after a battle in the mouth of a great river in Russia. Then he bit it in the middle with his teeth, and indented it fairly. He bent it to and fro until it was broken in half; and next he bored a hole in each portion, and gave one to Gudrid.