being
amiably disposed, agreed. Hilda and Ada were equally willing, and
Glumm, who by a mere chance happened to be there at the time, could not
choose but accompany them!

The family at Haldorstede were delighted to see their friends. Dame
Herfrida carried off Dame Astrid to her apartment to divest her of her
hat and mantle. Ingeborg bore off Ada, and the younger girls of the
household made away with Hilda, leaving Ulf to talk the politics of the
day with Haldor, while Glumm pretended to listen to them, but listened,
in reality, for Ada's returning footsteps. In a short time the fair
ones re-entered the hall, and there they had supper, or, more properly,
an interlude supper--a sort of supperlet, so to speak, composed of cold
salmon, scones, milk, and ale, which was intended, no doubt, to give
them an appetite for the true supper that should follow ere long. Over
this supperlet they were all very talkative and merry, with the
exception, poor fellow, of Glumm, who sat sometimes glancing at, and
always thinking of, Ada, and pendulating, as usual, between the
condition of being miserably happy or happily miserable.

No mortal, save Glumm himself, could have told or conceived what a life
Ada led him. She took him up by the neck, figuratively speaking, and
shook him again and again as a terrier shakes a rat, and dropped him!
But here the simile ceases, for whereas the rat usually crawls away, if
it can, and evidently does not want more, Glumm always wanted more, and
never crawled away. On the contrary, he crawled humbly back to the feet
of his tormentor, and by looks, if not words, craved to be shaken again!

It was while Glumm was drinking this cup of mingled bliss and torment,
and the others were enjoying their supperlet, that Solve Klofe and his
men, and Kettle Flatnose, Thorer the Thick, and the house-carles, burst
clamorously into the hall, with old Guttorm Stoutheart, who had met them
on the beach. Scarcely had they got over the excitement of this first
invasion when the widow Gunhild and her niece arrived to set the
household ablaze with her alarming news. The moment that Haldor heard
it he dispatched Alric in search of Erling, who, as we have seen,
immediately returned home.

Shortly afterwards he and Haldor entered the hall.

"Ho! my men," cried the latter, "to arms, to arms! Busk ye for the
fight, and briskly too, for when Harald Haarfager lifts his hand he is
not slow to strike. Where is Alric?"