It was a supreme moment. Leif's bronzed face was white, as he stood waiting for the noise to subside that he might answer them. Yet never had his bearing been statelier than when at last he stepped forward and faced them.
"I give you many thanks for your favor, friends," he said, courteously. "It is more than I could have expected, and I give you many thanks for it. But I think it right to remind you that I am not one of those men who trust in their own strength alone. What I have done I have been able to do by the help of my God whom you reject. To Him I give the thanks and the glory."
In that humility which is higher than pride, he raised the silver crucifix from his breast and bent his head before it. Out of the hush that followed, a man's voice rang strongly,—the voice of one of Greenland's foremost chiefs.
"Hail to the God of Leif Ericsson! The God that helped him must be all-powerful. Henceforth I will believe that He and no one else is the only God. Hail to the Cross!"
Before he had finished, another voice had taken up the cry—and another—and another; until there were not ten men who were not shouting it over and over, in a delirium of excitement. Eric turned his face away and made over his breast the hammer sign of Thor, but there was only pride in his look when he turned back.
Leif stood motionless amid the tumult; looking upward with that strange absent look, as though his eyes would pierce the clouds that veiled Valhalla's walls and search for one beloved face among the warriors upon the benches.
Under his breath he said to his English squire, "I pray God that Olaf Trygvasson hears this now, and knows that I have been as faithful to him in his death as I was in his life."
He did not feel it when Alwin bent and touched the scarlet cloak-hem with his lips, nor did he hear the fervent murmur, "So faithful will I be to you hereafter."
THE END