the river pools. But best he loved to go up the
firth in the boat which Leif had made him--a finished, clinker-built
little model of a war galley, christened the Joy-maker--and catch the
big sea fish. Monsters he caught sometimes in the deep water under the
cliffs, till he thought he was destined to repeat the exploit of
Thor when he went fishing with the giant Hymi, and hooked the Midgard
Serpent, the brother of Fenris-wolf, whose coils encircle the earth.

Nor was his education neglected. Arnwulf the Bearsark taught him
axe-play and sword-play, and he had a small buckler of his own, not of
linden-wood like those of the Wick folk, but of wickerwork after the
fashion of his mother's people. He learned to wrestle toughly with the
lads of his own age, and to throw a light spear truly at a mark. He was
fleet of foot and scoured the fells like a goat, and he could breast
the tide in the pool of the great foss up to the very edge of the white
water where the trolls lived.

There was a wise woman dwelt on the bay of Sigg. Katla was her name, a
woman still black-browed though she was very old, and clever at mending
hunters' scars. To her house Biorn went with Leif; and when they had
made a meal of her barley-cakes and sour milk, and passed the news
of the coast, Leif would fall to probing her craft and get but surly
answers. To the boy's question she was kinder. "Let the dead things be,
prince," she said. "There's small profit from foreknowledge. Better to
take fates as they come sudden round a turn of the road than be watching
them with an anxious heart all the way down the hill. The time will come
soon enough when you must stand by the Howe of the Dead and call on the
ghost-folk."

But Leif coaxed and Biorn harped on the thing, as boys do, and one night
about the midsummer time her hour came upon Katla and she spoke without
their seeking. There in the dim hut with the apple-green twilight
dimming the fells Biorn stood trembling on the brink of the half-world,
the woman huddled on the floor, her hand shading her eyes as if she were
looking to a far horizon. Her body shook with gusts of passion, and the
voice that came from her was not her own. Never so long as he lived did
Biorn forget the terrible hour when that voice from beyond the world
spoke things he could not understand. "I have been snowed on with snow,"
it said, "I have been beaten with the rain, I have been drenched with
the dew, long have I been dead." It spoke