"That will serve well, and I give you thanks," Alrek answered.
Nodding, she went swiftly in to hurry the baking; and Alrek arose and setting the Frowner upon his shoulder paced to and fro in the sunshine that had settled over the camp like a golden spell, subduing the bustle of morning activity to a drowsy drone.
Lulled by the hum and the slow motion, Snorri's yellow head began to nod, swaying and bobbing until it rested heavily upon the brown locks of his bearer. Gudrid received a bundle of sweet warm limpness in return for the basket and skin of ale which she finally brought out.
"It is not unlike gathering up a jellyfish," she laughed as she took him.
But Alrek's smile was faint in response. He had been thinking as he paced, and the gravity of what he was about to do was full upon him.
"I give you thanks," he said a second time, gently, and left her.
Outside, in the great free world beyond the wall, it seemed to him that everything was coaxing for a smile. The reach of woodland into which the grove deepened was alluring with the song of hidden brooks and spicy with the breath of pines and hospitable with berry thickets, black and red and blue as the river to which the wood finally gave way. The elms of the bank flaunted wreathing grape-vines; the rushes at the edge sported dragon-flies like living jewels,—flashing in the sunlight, the river itself was one broad smile. Dull anger took possession of him when he found his spirits too heavy to rise in response.
"It may be that I should become a coward if this went on," he murmured. "I was not any too quick about making up my mind."
And when, a little further on, he came to a finger of the stream and saw on one of the mossy stepping-stones a water-snake struggling with a frog which was only half swallowed, he made no move to release the victim.
"Better to die whole than to live crippled," he told himself grimly, and kept on his way.