The old warrior shook his head sadly, and pointed to a low bed, where a young man lay with the wasted features and bright eyes that told of a deadly disease in its advanced stage.
An exclamation of regret and sympathy escaped from Alric. “I cannot go,” he said; “my course lies to the left, by the Stor foss. Hast no one to send?”
“I will go, father,” said a smart girl of fifteen, who had been seated behind her mother, near the couch of the sick man.
“Thou, bairn?”
“Yes, why not? It is only a league to Hawksdal, where young Eric will gladly relieve me.”
“True,” said the old warrior, with a smile, as he began to don his armour. “Go; I need not tell thee to make haste!”
Alric waited to hear no more, but darted away as the little maid tripped off in another direction.
Thus hour by hour the night passed by and Alric ran steadily on his course, rousing up all the fighting men in his passage through the district. As he advanced, messengers with war-tokens were multiplied, and, ere the morning’s sun had glinted on the mountain peaks or lighted up the white fields of the Justedal glacier, the whole country was in arms, and men were crowding to the rendezvous.
Daylight had just commenced to illumine the eastern sky, when Alric, having completed his round, found himself once more on the cliffs above the sea. But he was still six or eight miles from Ulfstede, and the path to it along the top of the cliffs was an extremely rugged one. Earnestly then did the poor boy wish that he had remembered to put a piece of bread in his wallet before leaving home, but in his haste he had forgotten to do so, and now he found himself weary, foot-sore, and faint from exertion, excitement, and hunger, far from any human habitation. As there was no remedy for this, he made up his mind to take a short rest on the grass, and then set off for home as fast as possible.
With this end in view he selected a soft spot, on a cliff overlooking the sea, and lay down with a sigh of satisfaction. Almost instantly he fell into a deep slumber, in which he lay, perfectly motionless, for some hours. How long that slumber would have lasted it is impossible to say, for it was prematurely and unpleasantly interrupted.