, my daughter. (Casts his hood back.)

SIGURD AND HIS MEN. Ornulf of the Fiords!

DAGNY (glad, yet uneasy). My father and my brothers!

SIGURD. Stand thou behind me.

ORNULF. Nay, no need. (Approaching SIGURD.) I knew thy face as
soon as I was ware of thee, and therefore I stirred the strife; I
was fain to prove the fame that tells of thee as the stoutest man
of his hands in Norway. Henceforth let peace be between us.

SIGURD. Best if so it could be.

ORNULF. Here is my hand. Thou art a warrior indeed; stouter strokes
than these has old Ornulf never given or taken.

SIGURD (seizes his outstretched hand). Let them be the last strokes
given and taken between us two; and do thou thyself adjudge the matter
between us. Art thou willing?

ORNULF. That am I, and straightway shall the quarrel be healed.
(To the others.) Be the matter, then, known to all. Five winters
ago came Sigurd and Gunnar Headman as vikings to Iceland; they lay
in harbour close under my homestead. Then Gunnar, by force and craft,
carried away my foster-daughter, Hiordis; but thou, Sigurd, didst take
Dagny, my own child, and sailed with her over the sea. For that thou
art now doomed to pay three hundred pieces of silver, and thereby
shall thy misdeed be atoned.

SIGURD. Fair is thy judgment, Ornulf; the three hundred pieces will
I pay, and add thereto a silken cloak fringed with gold. It is a gift
from King AEthelstan of England, and better has no Icelander yet borne.

DAGNY. So be it, my brave husband; and my father, I thank thee. Now
at last is my mind at ease.

(She presses her father's and brothers' hands, and talks low
to them.)

ORNULF. Then thus stands the treaty between us; and from this day
shall Dagny be to the full as honourably regarded as though she had
been lawfully betrothed to thee, with the good will of her kin.

SIGURD. And in me canst thou trust, as in one of thine own blood.

ORNULF. That doubt I not; and see! I will forthwith prove thy
friendship.

SIGURD. Ready shalt thou find me; say, what dost thou crave?

ORNULF. Thy help in rede and deed. I have sailed hither to
Helgeland to seek out Gunnar Headman and draw him to reckoning
for the carrying away of Hiordis.

SIGURD (surprised). Gunnar!

DAGNY (in the same tone). And Hiordis--where are they?

ORNULF. In Gunnar's homestead, I ween.

SIGURD. And it is----?

ORNULF. Not many bow-shots hence; did ye not know?