you owe love and loyalty to Olaf, who is your foster-brother and saved your life, but you owe something to yourself also. I pray Odin that this folly may not have cost you your lordship. Fortune is a wench who will not bear slighting."
"I know it," answered Steinar, and there was something strange in his voice. "Believe me, I do not slight fortune; I follow her in my own fashion."
"Then it is a mad fashion," grumbled my father, and walked away.
It comes back to me that it was some days after this that I saw the ghost of the Wanderer standing on his grave mound. It happened thus. On a certain afternoon I had been riding alone with Iduna, which was a great joy to me, though I would sooner have walked, for then I could have held her hand, and perhaps, if she had suffered it, kissed her. I had recited to her a poem which I had made comparing her to the goddess Iduna, the wife of Bragi, she who guarded the apples of immortal youth whereof the gods must eat or die, she whose garment was the spring, woven of the flowers that she put on when she escaped from winter's giant grasp. I think that it was a very good poem of its own sort, but Iduna seemed to have small taste for poetry and to know little of the lovely goddess and her apples, although she smiled sweetly and thanked me for my verses.
Then she began to talk of other matters, especially of how, after we were wed, her father wished to make war upon another chieftain and to seize his land. She said that it was for this reason that he had been so anxious to form an alliance with my father, Thorvald, as such an alliance would make him sure of victory. Before that time, she told me that he, Athalbrand, had purposed to marry her to another lord for this very reason, but unhappily this lord had been killed in battle.
"Nay, happily for us, Iduna," I said.
"Perhaps," she answered with a sigh. "Who knows? At any rate, your House will be able to give us more ships and men than he who is dead could have done."
"Yet I love peace, not war," I broke in, "I who hate the slaying of those who have never harmed me, and do not seek to die on the swords of men whom I have no desire to harm. Of what good is war when one has enough? I would be no widow-maker, Iduna, nor do I wish that others should make you a widow."
Iduna looked at me with her steady blue eyes.
"You talk strangely, Olaf," she said, "and were it not known to be otherwise, some might hold that you are a coward. Yet it was no coward who leapt alone on board the battle ship, or who slew the great white bear to save Steinar's life. I do not understand you, Olaf, you who have doubts as to the killing of men. How does a man grow great except upon the blood of others? It is that which fats him. How does the wolf live? How does the kite live? How does Odin fill Valhalla? By death, always by death."
"I cannot answer you," I said; "yet I hold that somewhere there is an answer which I do not know, since wrong can never be the right."
Then, as she did not seem to understand, I began to talk of other things, but from that moment I felt as though a veil swung between me and Iduna. Her beauty held my flesh, but some other part in me turned away from her. We were different.
When we reached the hall we met Steinar, who was lingering near the door. He ran forward and helped Iduna to dismount, then said:
"Olaf, I know that you must not overtire yourself as yet, but your lady has told me that she desires to see the sunset from Odin's Mount. Have I your leave to take her there?"
"I do not yet need Olaf's leave to walk abroad, though some few days hence it may be different," broke in Iduna, with a merry laugh, before I could answer. "Come, lord Steinar, let us go and see this sunset whereof you talk so much."
"Yes, go," I said, "only do not stay too long, for I think a storm comes up. But who is that has taught Steinar to love sunsets?"
So they went, and before they had been gone an hour the storm broke as I had foreseen. First came wind, and with it hail, and after that thunder and great darkness, lit up from time to time by pulsing lightning.
"Steinar and Iduna do not return. I am afraid for them," I said at last to Freydisa.
"Then why do you not go to seek them?" she asked with a little laugh.
"I think I will," I said.
"If so, I will come with you, Olaf, for you still need a nurse, though, for my part, I hold that the lord Steinar and the lady Iduna can guard themselves as well as most folk. No, I am wrong. I mean that the lady Iduna can guard herself and the lord Steinar. Now, be not angry. Here's your cloak."
So we started, for I was urged to this foolish journey by some impulse that I could not master. There were two ways of reaching Odin's Mount; one, the shorter, over the rocks and through the forest land. The other, the longer, ran across the open plain, between the many earth tombs of the dead who had lived thousands of years before, and past the great mound in which it was said that a warrior of long ago, who was named the Wanderer, lay buried. Because of the darkness we chose this latter road, and presently found ourselves beneath the great mass of the Wanderer's Mount. Now the darkness was intense, and the lightning grew rare, for the hail and rain had ceased and the storm was rolling away.
"My counsel is," said Freydisa, "that we wait here until the moon rises, which it should do soon. When the wind has driven away the clouds it will show us our path, but if we go on in this darkness we shall fall into some pit. It is not cold to-night, and you will take no harm."
"No, indeed," I answered, "for now I am as strong again as ever I was."
So we stayed till the lightning, flashing for the last time, showed us a man and a woman standing quite close to us, although we had not heard them because of the wind. They were Steinar and Iduna, talking together eagerly, with their faces very near to each other. At the same moment they saw us. Steinar said nothing, for he seemed confused, but Iduna ran to us and said:
"Thanks be to the gods who send you, Olaf. The great storm caught us at Odin's temple, where we were forced to shelter. Then, fearing that you would grow frightened, we started, and lost our way."
"Is it so?" I answered. "Surely Steinar would have known this road even in the dark. But what matter, since I have found you?"
"Aye, he knew as soon as we saw this grave mound. But Steinar was telling me that some ghost haunts it, and I begged him to stay awhile, since there is nothing I desire so much as to see a ghost, who believe little in such things. So he stayed, though he says he fears the dead more than the living. Freydisa, they tell me that you are very wise. Cannot you show me this ghost?"
"The spirit does not ask my leave to appear, lady," answered Freydisa in her quiet voice. "Still, at times it does appear, for I have seen it twice. So let us bide here a little on the chance."
Then she went forward a few steps and began to mutter to herself.
Some minutes later the clouds broke and the great moon was seen riding low down in a clear sky, illumining the grave mound and all the plain, save where we stood in the shadow of the mount.
"Do you see aught?" asked Freydisa presently. "If not, let us be gone, for when the Wanderer comes at all it is at the rising of the moon."
Steinar and Iduna answered, "No," but I, who did see something, said:
"Look yonder among the shadows. Mayhap it is a wolf stirring. Nay, it is a man. Look, Iduna."
"I look and find nothing," she answered.
"Look again,"
