The Northman shook his head. “Starkad’s death will bring Helvin no nearer what lies at his heart; he is oath-bound to take the rule after his father,—so full of fear are they lest quarrels over the inheritance gnaw at the root of the Jarldom. But I will say that I think his rule will prove to be a good thing for the Town, which is now in danger of becoming more lifeless than a bone-heap. From all I have heard of his dislike of making a show of himself and his love of free ways, I have good hopes of him. It has often been in my mind to take service under him when he shall get the leadership. For Starkad I have no respect whatever. It is told that when he was young he was called Starkad the Berserker, and had the most hand in every Viking voyage and man-slaying; but now that the sap has dried in him, and he has put on Olaf the Saint’s religion, he expects all men to live like monks.”
The Skraelling gazed reflectively in the direction of the vanished cavalcade.
“Truth to say, the young braves of my race do not feel much love for the white man,” he said, presently. “He comes among us as one who comes among animals—driving them out to possess himself of their feeding-ground—dealing with them only when he wants profit out of their hides. The grayheads give us counsel to live in peace with the settlers of Norumbega. On the four trading-days of the year when they let us into their walls, they trade us useful things for our furs. But those of us whose teeth are still firm in our jaws do not like it to be led in as white men’s cows are led in to be milked, then turned out to pasture, the bars put up behind them.”
Straightening, he stood a bronze image of wounded pride. The young forester, as he bent to fasten one of his moccasin-strings, looked up at him understandingly. The softening feature of the Northman’s face was his eyes, deep blue as an evening sky, under level brows, broad and dark. When the thong was tied, he put out a hand and rested it on his companion’s bare shoulder.
“Judge not, brother, all of the white race from the behavior of one overbearing old man. It seems to me as if your people and my people should dwell together like sons of one father. Our hands are equally open to a friend, and no less hard-clinched against a foe; and you do not surpass us much in freedom and fearing nothing. When it has befallen the other white men to see the wonder of your woodcraft as I have seen it, and to be sheltered and fed by your hospitality as I have been, there will be much awanting if they do not hold you as high in honor as I do.”
Unbending gravely, the born heir of the forest laid his hand upon the breast of the forest’s adopted son.
“I know good of you; I will try to believe good of your people,” he said. “Come back with me now, brother. The lodge of the sachem, my father, is open to you. Always open to you.”
A second time the Northman shook his head. “That cannot be, comrade, for I came up here to learn a trap secret from an old huntsman, and having got it, I must hasten back and put it to use before I forget it. Do you on your side bear in mind, when next you paddle your bark-boat near the island, that the Tower will offer heartier welcome to none than to you.”
His hand fell from the bronze shoulder to the bronze palm, and with a strong clasp the two men parted,—the red man to melt into the russet shades beside them, the forester to go forward in the wake of the hunting party.
Had it blazed its path with axes, the cavalcade would scarcely have left a plainer track. Wherever foot and hoof had failed to print themselves on the path of leathery leaves, there was always the clew of a bruised lichen or a fern with a broken spine. Swinging along easily, mile after mile, the forester devoted his superfluous breath to humming scraps of melody and his alert eye to reading the fantastic runes. Here a bleeding tangle of wild grape-vine stretched out plundered hands. Yonder a long golden hair, floating like fairy gossamer from a low-growing limb, showed how the forest had exacted weregeld. Still farther on, a patch of flattened moss and ploughed-up earth told sly tales of a horseman brought low. When he came at last to the place where his road branched westward from theirs, he yielded the rune-page with regret.