n-eyed monster having obtained a
lodgment in their bosoms, could not be easily cast out. Yet the good
sense of each enabled him to struggle with some success against the
passion, for Glumm, although gruff, was by no means a bad man.

The presence of those conflicting feelings did not, however, interrupt
or retard the work of the field. It was a truly busy scene. Masters,
unfreemen, and thralls, mistresses and maidens, were there, cutting and
turning and piling up the precious crop with might and main; for they
knew that the weather could not be trusted to, and the very lives of
their cattle depended on the successful ingathering of the hay.

As we have here mentioned the three different classes that existed in
Norway, it may be well to explain that the masters were peasants or
"bonders", but not by any means similar to peasants in other lands; on
the contrary, they were the udal-born proprietors of the soil--the
peasant-nobility, so to speak, the Udallers, or freeholders, without any
superior lord, and were entitled to attend and have a voice in the
"Things" or assemblies where the laws were enacted and public affairs
regulated. The next class was that of the "unfreemen". These were
freed slaves who had wrought out or purchased their freedom, but who,
although personally free, and at liberty to go where and serve whom they
pleased, were not free to attend the legislative assemblies. They were
unfree of the Things, and hence their apparently contradictory
designation. They, however, enjoyed the protection and civil rights
imparted by the laws, and to their class belonged all the cottars on the
land paying a rent in work on the farm of the bonder or udaller, also
the house-carles or freeborn indoormen, and the tradesmen, labourers,
fishermen, etcetera, about villages and farms. Thralls were slaves
taken in war, over whom the owners had absolute control. They might
sell them, kill them, or do with them as they pleased. Thralls were
permitted to purchase their freedom--and all the descendants of those
freed thralls, or unfreemen, were free.

The clothing of the unfreemen was finer than that of the thralls. The
legs and arms of nearly all were bare from the knees and elbows
downward, though a few had swathed their limbs in bands of rough woollen
cloth, while others used straw for this purpose. Nearly all the men
wore shoes of untanned leather, and caps of the same material, or of
rough homespun cloth, resemblin