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Rh too noble to mingle with unknown, perhaps with base streams. Therefore in all honor I require thee to say who thou art.”

The Norseman, instead of answering himself, turned to his scald. “Sing, Thorgills! Twang thy harp to my saga!”

Thorgills touched the strings of his instrument, and in a voice mellowed by pathos and love for his master, told in strong, rude verse the story of the Norseman. He sang of a widowed queen, Aastrid, in Norway, a young mother flying from her own and dead husband’s enemies, and hiding with her baby boy, on a bleak little island in Rand’s Fiord. Sang how she found a few months’ rest in her father’s home, and then, her son’s enemies seeking his life, changed her queenhood for a beggars robe, and attended by a harper only, she asked for their bread through the length and breadth of her kingdom. Sang of the slaying of the faithful harper Thoralf, that the peasants might take the handsome boy. The voice of the scald was shaken with sobs of sorrowful anger, as he told of the death of the harper, who had left wife and child to serve his exiled queen and his baby king. Told of his queen’s marriage to the powerful Chief Lodin, of Viken, and how the kinsmen sheltered the boy and hid his name until the time was ripe for gaining his crown. Sang how the boy, meeting the murderer of faithful old Thoralf, slew him upon the spot, and with only a young harper,