the truth, that she was with child, and the child his. "If
that's the case, then I stay here till the child is born. Him I will
take, for it is the best thing for you." But Thorgunna said that she
would bring up the child, and send him out to Greenland as soon as he
was old enough. "I will accept him," Leif said.

He sailed, then, as he had intended, and went to Norway. There he fell
in with King Olaf Tryggvasson, and was made a Christian. The King put
great trust in him, and when he heard that he was going home to
Greenland, gave it in his charge to change the people's religion. Leif
said that would be a hard matter. "My mother is a Christian, I know;
but my father is not, and never will be, and my brothers are of no
account." But King Olaf was in earnest about it, and Leif promised
that it should be as he wished.

Thore and Gudrid went to Brattalithe to see Leif. Gudrid thought that
she had never seen so fine-looking a man. He was about thirty-five
years old, and six feet four inches high. He looked as broad as a
bull. He had golden hair and beard, and blue eyes. His face was
burned to a hot brown colour. He was frank and open in speech, and
full of fun and jokes. No secret was made of his intentions towards
the religion of the people in Greenland. He told his father what he
had undertaken; and he set about it at once. Theodhild, his mother,
helped him, and Gudrid made Thore give money to increase the church.
Thorstan and Thorwald were among the first to be sprinkled, but Freydis
would have nothing to do with it, and Eric Red said that he was too old
to change. Leif took that good-humouredly and laughed at his father.
"If I were to tell you where was a great store of gold and silver
coins, to be had for a little cold water on your back, you would strip
to the skin in midwinter. But you will believe in no treasure which
you cannot handle and run through your hands. Where do you expect to
go when you die, with all that wickedness on your shoulders? You will
come to a bad end, and ask me then to help you. I know how it will be.
But go your way."

He spent that summer preaching to the people in the Settlement up and
down the frith. Most of the people accepted what he told them, because
it was he who told it. Others said that if the King of Norway was of
that way of thinking it was more likely to be the right than the wrong
way.

There was another matter very much in Leif's mind, and that was t