und this mount the
people gathered. There friend met friend, foe met foe, rival met
rival, northmen met southmen, the Westmann islander met the Grimsey
islander, and the man from Seydisfiord met the man from Patriksfiord.
And because Althing gathered only every other year, many musty kisses
went round, with snuffboxes after them, among those who had not met
before for two long years.

It was a vast assembly, chiefly of men, in their homespun and
sheepskins and woollen stockings, cross-gartered with hemp from ankle
to knee. Women, too, and young girls and children were there, all
wearing their Sunday best. And in those first minutes of their
meeting, before Althing began, the talk was of crops and stock, of
the weather, and of what sheep had been lost in the last two hard
winters. The day had opened brightly, with clear air and bright
sunshine, but the blue sky had soon become overcast with threatening
clouds, and this lead to stories of strange signs in the heavens, and
unaccustomed noises on the earth and under it.

A man from the south spoke of rain of black dust as having fallen
three nights before until the ground was covered deep with it.
Another man, from the foot of Hekla, told of a shock of earthquake
that had lately been felt there, travelling northeast to southwest. A
third man spoke of grazing his horse on the wild oats of a glen that
he had passed through, with a line of some twenty columns of smoke
burst suddenly upon his view. All this seemed to pass from lip to lip
in the twinkling of an eye, and when young men asked what the signs
might mean, old men lifted both hands and shook their heads, and
prayed that the visitations which their island had seen before might
never come to it again.

Such was the talk, and such the mood of the people when the hour
arrived for the business of Althing to begin, and then all eyes
turned to the little wooden Thing House by the side of the church,
wherein the Thing-men were wont to gather for their procession to the
Mount of Laws. And when the hour passed, and the procession had not
yet appeared, the whisper went around that the Governor had not
arrived, and that the delay was meant to humor him. At that the
people began to mutter among themselves, for the slumbering fire of
their national spirit had been stirred. By his tardy coming the
Governor meant to humiliate them! But, Governor or no Governor, let
Althing begin its sitting. Who was the Governor that Althing shou