We were running along a forest-covered strand, where the roots of old trees gnarled themselves into the water.
“Now we must go to the hall that I told you about,” said my lord.
“Yes and see the girl I am so eager to see!” exclaimed young Lord Erik, his white face lighting as he gazed up smiling to my lord.
He laughed.
“Ah,” he said, “it is both pleasant and good,” and he gazed along the depleted seats.
The next day there was a strange excitement in my lord’s eyes, and we began to put together our clothes. And late in the afternoon we came into the little bay on the shore of which lay old Raud’s castle. We ran through the water hauling our ship up with cables, and with shouting from the people coming welcomingly down from the castle, we hastened up the beach.
As we sat over the meat that night, a curtain was pulled aside from the door by Lord Raud’s chair, and he, rising feebly, my lord slowly, and smiling, and young Lord Erik jumping to his feet eagerly, we saw her come gliding in whom we had seen often before. She gave her hand timidly, yet with a little laugh, to my lord, shyly yet kindly to young Lord Erik, and welcomed them as her guests as her father had welcomed them as his at the castle-door as we passed over it. How such a maiden could be the daughter of such a feeble, timid, dainty old man as Lord Raud, I could never know. As a child pretending to ask for forgiveness was her face—half-laughing and half-sorrowful. Her moving was like a ripple of blown cloth, it was so springing graceful. And her eyes, when they occasionally looked at you, had a woman’s innocence, never a man’s straightforwardness.
It was sunset three days later. Walking on the beach I could see my lord and Hildur pacing slowly, he laughing, along the grass that stretched by the path to the houses in the wood. The scene was lit up by one of the sometimes far-reaching clear sunsets of autumn. I could see her hand raised in remonstrance, and though I was too far, I could see that they were both laughing. Presently she nodded her head of gold hair to him, and turned into the castle-door, leaving him alone in the soft, far, unusual, light. He turned.
As he moved, I saw that he was not laughing. As he came down to the beach, I could see the same excitement in his eyes that had always been there when he came near her, since his hair began to grizzle, and she used to bring the cynical old father’s friend his beer in the great hall after meat—a little maiden.
He passed me and turning at a word behind me, I saw him meet young Lord Erik; smiling again. But the young man’s face was troubled, that face on which all emotions were like shadows on even water.