r father,
and therefore---"

He pointed to the altar, and I saw that he had laid his own untasted
supper on the fire that he had lighted, and I had naught to say. The
thing was over-strange to me, who thought nothing of these things. It
was true that the host always sacrificed before sailing on the Viking
path, but tonight had been urgent haste.

"Thor will not listen to any but a warrior," I said. "Come home,
brother, for mother waits us."

"If not Thor, who is maybe busy at the battle they talk of, then do I
think that All Father will listen," he said stoutly. "But this was all
that I had to make sacrifice withal, and it may not be enough."

"The jarl will make amends when he comes back," I said, wishing to get
home and away from this place, and yet unwilling to chide the child.
"Now let us go, for mother will grow anxious."

With that he put his hand in mine, and we both saluted Thor, as was
fitting, and then went homeward. It seemed to me that the glare in the
north was fiercer now than when I had first seen it.

Now, after my mother had put Withelm to bed, I told her how I had found
him; and thereat she wept a little, as I could see in the firelight.

After a long silence she said, "Strange things and good come into the
mind of a child, and one may learn what his fate shall be in the days to
come. I am sure from this that Withelm will be a priest."

Now as one may buy the place of a godar, with the right to have a temple
of the Asir for a district and the authority that goes therewith, if so
be that one falls vacant or is to be given up by the holder, this did
not seem unlikely, seeing how rich we were fast growing. And indeed my
mother's saying came to pass hereafter, though not at all in the way of
which we both thought.

There was no alarm that night. The old warriors watched round the town
and along the northern tracks, but saw nothing, and in the morning the
black smoke hung over the place of the burning, drifting slowly seaward.
The wind had changed, and they said that it would doubtless have taken
the foe away with it, as my father had hoped. So I went down to the ship
with Raven, and worked at the few things that were still left to be done
to her as she lay in her long shed on the slips, ready to take the water
at any tide. She was only waiting for cargo and stores to be put on
board her with the shift of wind that had come at last, and I thought
that my father would see to these things as soon as