In the eagerness in which she clasped her hands, the wine-cup fell clanging from Helga's hold. "Is he dead?" she cried, imploringly. "Only tell me that, and I will serve you all the rest of my life! Is Gilli dead?"
But Gudrid had sunk back in another faint. She lay with her eyes closed, moaning and murmuring to herself.
Leif, biting sharply at his thick mustache, as he was wont to do when excited, turned sharply on Thorir.
"What is the reason of this?" he demanded. "What are these tidings concerning my kinswoman, which your wife hesitates to speak? Is Gilli of Trondhjem dead?"
Thorir answered with great haste and politeness, "No, no; naught so bad as that. Naught but what I expect can be easily remedied. But it appears that when Gilli attempted to follow his daughter to Greenland, last fall, he suffered a shipwreck and the loss of much valuable property, barely escaping with his life. From this he drew the rash conclusion that his daughter had become a misfortune to him, as some foreknowing woman had once said she would. And he declared that since the maiden preferred her poorer kinsfolk in Greenland, she might stay with them; and—"
The words burst rapturously from Helga's lips: "And he disowned me?"
Thorir stared at her in astonishment. "Yes," he said, pityingly.
It was just as well that he had not attempted a longer answer, for he never would have finished it. Madness seemed suddenly to fall upon the ship. In the face of her disinheritance, the shield-maiden was radiant. Down in the waist of the ship, two youths who had caught the words threw up their hats with cheers. Leif Ericsson himself laughed loudly, and snapped his fingers in derision.
"A mighty revenge!" he said. "My kinswoman could have received no greater kindness at the churl's hands. Could she have accomplished it by a dagger-thrust, I doubt not that she would have let his base blood run from her veins long ere this."
He turned to where Helga stood watching him, her heart in her eyes, and pulled her toward him and kissed her.