“King Harald is on his way to the dale,” said Alric; “we assemble at Ulfstede.”
“Shall I bear on the token?” asked the youngest of the men.
“Aye; but go thou with it up the Wolf’s Den Valley. I myself will bear it round by the Eagle Crag and the coast.”
“That is a long way,” said the man, taking his shield down from a peg in the wall.
Alric replied not, for he had already darted away, and was again speeding along the mountain side.
Night had begun to close in, for the season had not yet advanced to the period of endless daylight. Far away in an offshoot vale, a bright ruddy light gleamed through the surrounding darkness. Alric’s eye was fixed on it. His untiring foot sped towards it. The roar of a mighty cataract grew louder on his ear every moment. He had to slacken his pace a little, and pick his steps as he went on, for the path was rugged and dangerous.
“I wonder if Old Hans of the Foss is at home?” was the thought that passed through his mind as he approached the door.
Old Hans himself answered the thought by opening the door at that moment. He was a short, thick-set, and very powerful man, of apparently sixty years of age, but his eye was as bright and his step as light as that of many a man of twenty.
“The war-token,” he said, almost gaily, stepping back into the cottage as Alric leaped in. “What is doing, son of Haldor?”
“King Harald will be upon us sooner than we wish. Ulfstede is the meeting-place. Can thy son speed on the token in the next valley?”