"What have we here?" he asked in surprise.
Rising to greet him, Alrek looked down at the bundle with a laugh. "It is likely that your son is going to make a Berserker, Karlsefne," he answered. "The more noise the swords make, the louder he laughs."
The smile dawning on the Lawman's lips faded as his glance passed from the rabbit-skin bundle to the rug on which it lay. After a little he said gravely: "This is an unusually fine bearskin which you have, my young kinsman. I want to ask if it is the one the Skraellings brought, on that last trading day of which so much has been told?"
It was so plain that the same misgiving was in his mind which had first risen to Alrek's, that the Sword-Bearer breathed a prayer of thankfulness that he had lost no time in making sure of Gard's good faith. He replied readily: "It is the same one, Karlsefne. One of my men had such luck in trading that he bought it when the price was lower than it had been."
"Nevertheless, I should like much to know what he paid for it," said the Lawman.
"Willingly," answered Alrek the Chief. "He paid a large piece of the red cloth which we had been trading with, and a ring with a red stone. The Skraelling liked the ring so well that he put it on as soon as he bought it."
The Lawman's gaze became less unswervingly direct; presently its sharpness was softened by a twinkle. "Now if all the Northmen of the new lands continue to show such merchant talent, Vinland will soon be as great a trading place as Iceland," he laughed.
Then, as if to remove any lingering doubt of his friendliness, he added that their taste in selecting a practising place was excellent; and that it appeared that they were doing good work in it; and that, if they would allow it, he should be glad to remain a while and look on. When permission had been graciously accorded, he sat down on the rug between the chief and the rabbit-skin bundle and showed himself the most inspiring audience the band had ever performed before.
Under the stimulus of his applause, Njal the Jumper achieved a mark a finger's length higher than any he had made before; while Brand the Wrestler felt such power swell in his great limbs that for a time he seriously considered the idea of challenging Karlsefne himself. Later, he was glad that he had not, for when they stopped to rest and came and stood around the bearskin, Karlsefne borrowed Alrek's dwarf-made sword and rose up, towering and sinewy and straight as a pine, and showed them some feats that he had learned in the East,—the real East where the sun is so hot that all people are as brown as roasted fowls, and the rich eat snow for a luxury. Baring a knotted arm as lean as a spear-shaft, he did things that furnished them fireside gossip for the rest of the cold weather.
When at last he had set the Frowner on his shoulder, and he and the Champions had parted in a glow of good-fellowship, Erlend said warmly: