“Does anyone know where Alric is?” asked Ingeborg.
As everyone professed ignorance on this point, his mother said that she had no doubt he was safe enough; for he was a bold little man, and quite able to take care of himself.
“If he has had his own way,” observed Ivor the Old, who came in at that moment, “he is in the fleet for he is a true chip of the old tree; but we are not like to see him again, methinks, for I have seen the fleet giving back on the right wing, and hasted hither to tell ye.”
This report had the effect of shaking Herfrida’s confidence to the extent of inducing her to give up her preparations for the feast, and assist the others in making arrangements for a hasty flight with such household valuables as could be easily carried about the person. Some time after they had begun this work, a young man, who was a cripple, and therefore a non-combatant, hobbled into the hall, and announced the fact that Haldor’s fleet was routed everywhere, and fleeing. He had seen it from the cliff behind the stede, and indeed it could partly be seen from the hall window.
“Now,” cried Finn the One-eyed bitterly, “all is lost, and I must carry out Erling’s last instructions. He told me, if the fight went against us, and the King’s men gained the day, I was to lead ye down by the forest path to the cave behind Ulfstede, where there is a ship big enough to carry the whole household. If alive, he and his friends are to meet us there. Come, we must make haste; some of the ships are already on the beach, and if they be the King’s men we shall soon see them here.”
Everyone was now so thoroughly convinced of their desperate case that without reply each went to complete arrangements as fast as possible.
“Wilt thou go with us?” said Finn to the hermit, when all were assembled in front of the house at the edge of the forest.
“I will, since God seems to order it so,” said the hermit; “but first I go to my hut for the rolls of the Book. As ye have to pass the bottom of the cliff on which my dwelling is perched, I will easily overtake you.”
“Let us go with him,” said Hilda to Ada. “There is a roll in the hut which Erling and I have been trying to copy; Christian may not be able to find it, as I hid it carefully away—and,” she continued, blushing slightly, “I should not like to lose it.”
“You had better go with us,” said Finn gravely.