Page:The North Star (1904).djvu/304

278 tender heart with that remembrance. She was in such fear of that recollection, that she could only whisper: ‘It was such an awful deed! So terrible a sacrilege!’ And then in a lower whisper: ‘God’s mercy on the wretched soul that bears so black a crime.’ I wot my lady that some of Thore Klakka’s traitors do know who did this murder; but my gentle young wife knows naught—still, she fears this Thore.”

Lady Aastrid sighed, then looking up said in a brighter tone: “Tell me thy good news, Thorgills. We have gone down go far on a gloomy way that we have wandered off from the pleasant track on which thou didst start.”

“I was about to tell thee, my lady, of King Olaf’s victorious journey against Raud the Strong. We have just returned and I have come from my home, where I went on our landing at Nidaros. We had a hard journey pursuing Raud, but King Olaf had sworn to cut off the deeds of this viking, who has been harrying all the south coast of Norway. King Olaf rode in his grand new ship, the ‘Crane,’ and Raud rode in the ‘Serpent.’ Oh, but it was a fine chase! We had almost caught them when the winds and the sea did plot against us. Such roaring of the storm and such lashing of the waves! Some of the crew, who were heathens, began to swear that Raud was a wizard, and that by his own magic he had raised up the storm against us. The heathens on the ‘Crane’