the
monastery, and told of the life at the court of King Harald; of his
lordly royal hall, in which twenty skalds by turns play the harp.

And how the boldest heroes ever willingly enter his service.

And how year by year his warlike expeditions are crowned with victory.

And of Gunnlodh, his wonderfully beautiful golden-haired daughter, who
pledges the bravest heroes and the best skalds in the horn.

Since then, my inclination no longer turns towards psalm-singing and
vigils.

But certainly they will not easily let me leave the monastery.

For because I can write Latin and Greek well, Aaron, the new Abbot, the
Italian, who has succeeded the good peace-loving Aelfrik, makes me
unceasingly write out manuscripts, which they then sell for a great
price, in Britain, and even in Germany.

And Aaron is very sharp upon my track, because I seem to him to lack
true Christian zeal.

And did he know that upon these parchment sheets, whereupon I ought to
have written out, for the seventeenth time, the treatise of Lactantius
"de mortibus persecutorum," I have, by night, written out the history
of my dear father--it would not pass without many days' fasting, and
some score of penitential psalms.

Lately he actually threatened me to have "some one" scourged, who ever
again came too late for the Hora.

That "someone" was I. For I had just begun to write about the battle on
the Singing Swan, and could not tear myself away from it when the Hora
bell called.

But ere the son of Halfred the Sigskald endures scourging on the
back,--rather will I slay Aaron and all his Italian monks.

But for slaying I need something different from this copying style.

* * * * *

Thus far had I written by Good Friday.

For a long while could I not contrive to write further. For the hatred,
jealousy, and mistrust of Aaron and his hangers-on--there are many of
his Italian countrymen come with him from Rumaberg--grow constantly
greater. He has forbidden me to write by night.

Only by day, and in the library, no longer in my cell, may I write. And
the transcript of Lactantius I am to deliver to him on the appointed
parchment by Whitsuntide, on pain of seven days' fasting.

My resentment increases against this priestly tyranny.

Only rarely, and by stealth, can I get at these pages. Also I can only
with great difficulty reach my dear father's hill. They track my lonely
wanderings.

It will soon come to op