She answered readily, "I have entertained myself very poorly so far, kinsman, for I have been doing such woman's-work as Thorhild commends. I have been in your sleeping-house, sewing upon the skin curtains that are to make the fourth wall of my chamber."
Leif glanced at the Norman with a dry smile. "Chamber!" he commented. "Learn from this, Robert of Normandy, how a Norse maiden regards a stall! Yet, whatever hostile thing attacks us, a Norman lady in her bower would be no safer. Tyrker's sleeping-place, and mine and Valbrand's, lie between the house-door and the chamber of Helga, Gilli's daughter." He freed the girl's hand, though he still held her with his eyes. "Whither do you betake yourself now?" he demanded. "Long rambles are unsafe in an unknown country."
In her perfect composure, Helga even laughed; a silvery peal that sent a thrill of pleasure through the brooding old trees.
"By my knife, kinsman, you take your responsibility heavily, now that you have remembered it at all!" she retorted. "I do not go far; only a little way up the river, where grow the rushes of which I wish to make baskets."
The chief released her then; and soon she disappeared among the trees.
One by one, the men finished their meal and drifted back to their various employments. The hammers began again their merry tattoo; and the wrangling voices of dice-throwers replaced the shouts of the bathers. Except for these, however, the place was still. The sun shone hotly, and the trees appeared to nap in the drowsy air.
Perhaps because he preferred asking questions to answering them, Robert Sans-Peur began an earnest conversation, concerning the harvest, the traps, and the fishing. But as the hour grew, the gaps between his inquiries stretched wider. As the tree-heads ceased even their nodding and hung motionless, the chief's answers became briefer and slower. At last the moment arrived when no response at all was forthcoming. Glancing up, the Norman found his host tilted back against the maple trunk in placid slumber.
The young man let something like a sigh of relief escape him. Still, watching the sleeping face warily, he tried the effect of another question. Oblivion. He rose to his feet with a daring flourish of yawns and stretching, and awaited the result of that test. The deep breathing never faltered.
Then Alwin the Lover hesitated no longer. Quietly and directly, as one who treads a familiar path, he walked around the corner of the last hut and disappeared among the trees.
Many feet had worn a distinct trail through the woods to the edge of the bluff, and down the steep to the water; but only two pair of feet had ever turned aside, midway the descent, and found the path to Eden. Like a rosy curtain, a tall sumach bush hid the trail's beginning; the overhanging bluffs concealed it from above; the tangle of shrubs and vines which covered the bank from the water's edge screened it from below. Hardly more than a rabbit track, a narrow shelf against the wall of the steep, it ran along for a dozen yards to stop where a ledge of moss-covered rock thrust itself from the soil.