“Poor!” The trader’s man laughed impatiently. “Good Bend-the-Bow, are you too drunk to understand that I am talking about the Jarl’s favorite, whose shabby belt-pouch is fuller of gold than your head of wits,—even when you are sober and they are all at home? If he were still a ringless forester, who would stir tongue about his habits? It is because he has gold to spend but is too careless to do it, that he has my blame; and I would lay my purse on it that this is a part of the cause why he has lost credit with the Jarl’s sister, as gossips say he has. Yet you need not think that I undervalue what is inside his shell. Far and wide, it is known that he brought this treaty to pass which is going to send such ship-loads to Norway in the spring as never left port before. For that, all traders lift their horns to him; and I should dislike to have it come to his ears that I—”
“Then hold your peace for here he comes!” the guardsman interrupted, and stood up with a genial bellow to pitch at the opening door one of the shoes which a thrall had just handed him.
It was a rash act since the new-comer might just as easily have been the Jarl as the Jarl’s song-maker—the trading-house standing at the junction of many paths—but it came to no bad end for the doorway actually did frame the tall sinewy form of Randvar, Rolf’s son, his harp occupying a cloak’s place at his back. At sight of him, even the Skraellings changed from bronze images into men with cordial eyes; while the hunters swung up their horns with a burst of cheers. Barely they gave him time to hand over his broken harp to the trader’s man before they forced him into the place they had made for him, plied him with drink, with toasts, with questions and banter. Bolverk was obliged to limp over in one shoe to get a seat beside him, and get his attention for the confidences with which he was bursting.
They seemed to be of a nature more absorbing to the teller than to the listener for even while he gave one ear to them, Randvar left the other open to the hunter’s chaff, and broke out restlessly, now and again, to gibe back or to answer in their own tongue some inquiries from his Skraelling friends. But he did not fail to make the required promise to go down to the wedding-feast in the spring, and aroused himself with proper enthusiasm when the lover came at last to an exulting climax.
“There! If you can anywhere see a better lookout than that, I shall say your eyesight is keener than Erna’s.”
“Nothing but the sun’s can equal it in brightness! I call upon every man who hears my voice to drink to your luck at my expense,” the Songsmith answered promptly, and drew a handful of silver rings from his shabby pouch.
If cup-wishes count, never was bride more richly dowered than Snowfrid of Freya’s Tower. When it was over, the beaming Bolverk slapped his prospective foster-kinsman affectionately upon the back.
“Nowhere have I found a better comrade than you! To talk one’s affairs over with you is a good help. Now let me show as much friendship and hear how matters have fared with you, these three months. I can see one thing that you have not done, and that is to get fat.”
An old trapper clad in bear’s fur uttered a bear-like grunt.
“Huh! See the gainfulness of having young eyes! As soon as the boy came into the room, I saw that there were lines between his eyebrows like a wagon’s ruts,—and not an empty wagon, either! Better take to the forest again, Rolf’s son, if it weighs so heavily upon your spirit to be a Jarl’s favorite.”