"Alrek, when is it your intention to take the time to get furnishings?" Erlend besought.
The chief shook his brown head steadily. "Not until we get out of the debt which we got into to build this booth," he answered, and closed the opening discussion by putting aside his rune-stick and rising. "Now it seems to me that you are all looking too far into the future. I should be content if I could get something to eat. Who has gone after the fish? And what is the reason that he is not back again?"
As head-cook, Brand answered him, though sulkily: "Gard has gone after the fish, and it is high time that he was back again."
"That is what I have been trying to do, look for him," little Olaf the Fair spoke up for the first time, in aggrieved tones. And secure at last from interference, he flung the door open to the nipping January wind. "No, I see nothing of him—but I do hear the snow crunch!"
"It is certainly time," Brand blustered.
Nevertheless he bent his lank length over the fire with recovered good-humor; and greater alacrity came into the movements of those who were not yet dressed, while those who were, turned toward the door, gibes at each tongue's end.
The nature of their greeting changed, however, when Gard the Ugly had stamped into the room and they saw the size of the catch swinging at his side. Waking, their sleeping appetites cried out in alarm:
"Only three!" "Go into the hands of the Troll—" "—gone long enough to get thirty!" "What in the Fiend's name has come to the fishing?"
Tossing his fish to the clamoring cooks, Gard was a long time pulling off his fur-lined gloves before he answered: "Nothing has come to the fishing."