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150 Thorgills rose to go. His eyes shone and his whole face was radiant. “Dear Lady Aastrid,” he said, bending down his handsome blond head, and kissing the hand she held out at parting, “thou hast filled me with happy hope. I will be patient. I will be gentle. Through the favor of Christ and the Virgin, I will yet wear upon my heart this sweet, white blossom.”

That night as Thorgills sat before the king, and tuned his harp for Olaf’s pleasure, he sang a new saga that had rung all day through his silence and through his speech. And King Olaf said musingly, when the song was done: “As thou didst sing, Thorgills, I thought me of Gyda, and yet again of the little maid I ransomed from the Danes.”

A few days later Thorgills went to the house of Lady Aastrid. “The scald of King Olaf waits in the