From under the tunic he was about to pull down over his head, Gard looked at him irefully. "And I have told you," he retorted, "that one can not always tell what the price of his deed will be."
"I do not care what it is!" bellowed Brand.
Harald Grettirsson turned on them with a grin. "What ails you two that you have done nothing but quarrel since the trading day? Cool off a little," he jeered, and suddenly ran into them so that they were jostled off the high ground into a hollow and sank in snow up to their waists. Foreseeing vengeance, Grettirsson took promptly to his heels, and the desertion of the three completed the interruption begun by the appearance of Gudrid's blue hood.
Gudrid took her departure with tactful promptness. "Now you need not trouble yourself to hunt for fine words," she forestalled the somewhat embarrassed greeting of her young kinsman. "I am well versed in the Viking laws about keeping women out; we have no other intention than to go directly back, the Frowner and I."
Cordial as his relations with his kinswoman were, the chief could not ask her to alter her decision; but he reached out and took the bundle off her hip. "The Frowner is not a woman," he corrected. "I think he will like the noise better than the rattling of his string of shark's teeth. I will see to it that he comes to no harm."
The mother yielded him doubtfully. "But do you know for certain that you will?" she demurred. "If he should get his hand on the hatchet in your belt—"
"Why, he would be able to do more than I can," Alrek finished for her. "I have been unable to find my hatchet for weeks."
Gudrid consented to smile. "I took for granted it was there. Then I will certainly leave him, for I should like him to be outdoors some while longer. I will send a thrall—a man-thrall—to fetch him."
But it came about that small Snorri Thorfinnsson was returned to his mother by no such humble individual. With the shortening of the light and the lengthening of the shadows, Karlsefne the Lawman came through the wood on his way campward from a day's outing. Coming out in the open where a dozen Champions were fencing with a mighty clash and clatter, he would have apologized for the intrusion and kept on his way; but reaching the tree before which the red-cloaked chief sprawled on a great rug, drawling comment, he heard from the rabbit-skin bundle at the chiefs side a squeal of laughter which brought him to a standstill.