Roland shuddered.
"God's mercy!" he cried. "Hark how the crag-fiends mock!"
"Hark--fiends mock!--fiends mock!--mock!" called back the echoes.
"It is nothing," laughed Olvir. "Whoever the rock-dwellers may be,--kobold or scrat, troll or dwarf,--they never do harm. In my bairnhood I would often linger in the glens where they dwelt, to jeer at them."
"Truly, yours was a wild boyhood, Olvir. You have yet told me little of it."
"A merry bairnhood, though Otkar's was a heavy hand."
"That I can well believe. Tell me more of your tomb life."
"Tell me, rather, of your swart Bretons, and of the Frisian vikings, who, you say, settled along the coast of southern Neustria in the olden days."
"Such is the tale. But I am not in the mood for talk. I would rather hear of your wild Norse land."
"Then look well at these crags and heights,--most of all at the great snow-peak. Let this rough way be instead the smooth ship-path,--the fiord; and on either hand the foam-white torrents leaping from the heights. Such is my home."