Those waiting above heard his voice rise awfully from the shadow: "It is a Skraelling who has been murdered! Fetch torches!"
Waiting for the lights to be brought, the men stood looking dumbly at one another and at the snag-like arm, in every mind the same thought. Once Karlsefne's deep tones interpreted their silence, tolling heavily through the darkness:
"I do not know who has done this deed, but I know that in slaying this one man he has taken the lives of more men than tongue can number. If ever the Skraellings come again it will be to make warfare, and to save our lives we shall be forced to take more of theirs; and so it will go on through ages yet unborn, until a white face—which I had striven to make a sign of friendliness—will become to the wild men a token of bloodshed." A moment his voice rang out in terrible wrath: "Behold how the heedlessness of one man can overthrow the wisdom of a hundred!"
Daring no answer, they awaited in silence the arrival of the torches. But when at last the lights had been brought and handed down, and they had descended after them, at least four spoke at once:
"It is the Skraelling who offered the bear's hide!"
"By Odin," cried a fifth, "I saw him walking in this direction shortly before the time of the scream! He must have fallen over the bank and lain all this while under the snow that was coming down."
"What has become of the hide, however?" pondered Hjalmar Thick-Skull, before memory recalled to him whose booth the great skin was even now gracing as its chiefest treasure.
"It must be that they bought it just before he was slain," Grimkel struck in hastily.
But the Lawman took the torch from him and held it to each brown hand in turn. "No ring with a red stone is on any of the fingers," he said.