| FACING PAGE | |
|---|---|
| ["The token of Hilda!"] | Frontispiece |
| ["Go forth into the sea, O sword!"] | 31 |
| ["Let him win it or perish!"] | 176 |
| ["O companion of Hilda!"] | 263 |
| ["O thou Jesus, of the sons of the gods!"] | 313 |
Ulric the Jarl.
[CHAPTER I.]
Around the Viking House-fire.
In the Northland were the roots from which grew the great nations which now rule the earth. The tribes were many, but the principal representative and the absorbent of their thoughts and their traditions may receive from us the general name of Saxons. These were the swordsmen of the sea whom the Roman legionaries declared to be the hardest fighters they had met, whether on land or water.
In the Northland were also the germs of political and religious liberty, and here were to be found the first forms of our highest faith.
But the men of the old race sailed southward and then eastward, at the first, taking their gods with them. Not until centuries later did they march and conquer this far western world, but we, their children, still devoutly believe that the great God came with them.
The landward slope of a vast gray granite headland was thickly covered with towering pine trees. Beyond them, inland, lay a snowy valley without woods, and beyond that arose a blue and misty range of mountains. There were no trees upon the summit of the headland; only bare rocks, storm worn and deeply furrowed, were uplifted to meet the bitter wind that swept down over the flinty ice covering of the North Sea from the yet colder winter which was manufacturing icebergs within the arctic circle. Sheer down, hundreds of feet, the perpendicular face of the cliff smote sharply the glittering level that stretched away westerly over the sea to the horizon, while an arm of it pushed in eastward over the fettered waters of a deep and gloomy fiord, rock-bordered.