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250 Sigrid with other suitors, and the lady so scorned them all, as unworthy of her, that in her wrath she set fire to the hall where her many suitors slept.

“‘I’ll teach little kings the risk of seeking to wed me,’ she said when the shrieks of the burning men reached her. My lord Bishop, it was a right hard lesson, and they could not forget it, for they died in the learning of it. Harold was well chastised for his desertion of his wife, and she, poor woman, waiting for his return with this little lad but a few months old. Then, after a space, Aasta married my kinsman Sigurd Syr, though to be sure Harold was also of the race of Harold Fairhaired, and this little lad stands near to the crown of Norway. Sigurd Syr’s grand-sire was Sigurd the Giant, the son of Snefrid, that wife of Harold Fairhaired who the sagas say was a sorceress. She was a Finn, and when Harold first saw her, she gave him to drink a horn of mead that so bewitched him, he was in Snefrid’s power until she died. Even after she died, her beautiful corpse did not decay for months, and Harold shut himself up with the dead for a long space.”

“But, my King,” said the gentle bishop, “ these were the days and the doings of heathen kings. A Christian monarch should not be ruled by witches and wicked women. But see! Here come the little lad and his father and mother to be baptized.”

The king arose, and held the hand of the little Olaf, while the ceremony was performed. The proud