Snowfrid’s eyes answered him delightedly, but her lips waited bashfully for her mother. She ran no risk in doing so, however, for under Erna’s apparent sternness there lay as much Norse simplicity as Norse kindness.
She said, “Go, child, of course,” and poured Bolverk so excellent a stirrup-cup, and shook his hand so warmly at parting, that he went away without even observing that the master of the Tower had bidden him no farewell, but still stood with his foot on the bench and his eyes on the fire.
Erna looked at him curiously when she had resumed her seat and her knitting. At last she spoke:
“Hard tidings are these and great to hear; yet I cannot see, foster-son, that they touch us so nearly as you appear to feel.”
“You will see when I tell you what spell some troll laid upon me,” he retorted. Straightening, he went and threw himself down in his favorite place upon the fragrant mat, and began to pour out wrathfully the story of his adventure at the Black Pool.
“There you have it all before you,” he wound up. “I was made to behave in an unfavorable manner before the man with whom, above all others, I would wish to stand well. I thought, first, it was some poison from the Pool that beset me; but since it worked no harm to any one else, I know it was a curse turned on me alone—Hel take the luck! Hel take it, I say!”
When she had let her suspended breath go from her in a yawn, murmuring, “That was a strange happening—a strange happening,” she answered gravely: “You throw blame undeservedly. It is your guardian spirit that has given you power to feel it better than others when an evil deed is in the air. I have often heard of people who had such a gift—”
He flung up his arms to snap the fingers sharply. “Take my share of such white-livered gifts! Power? I call that a weakness which makes me a stick in the hands of something stronger than I! If I knew what part of me it had root in, it should not last long.”
“You will bring punishment upon yourself for your ungratefulness,” she said, but said it without force, seeming to wander among her thoughts. His scorn held the field.
“I should be glad to hear what I am to be grateful for! Nothing could make Helvin believe now that I am any better than a coward. It shows what a cur he took me for that his first impulse was to send an arrow after me. I am as much outlawed from his following as though a lawman had laid a ban upon me.”