his narrow channel into a
wide lake from which the mountains fell back, seamed and laced with
bright streams and waterfalls, and clad with forests, amid which
the cornfields were scattered wherever the rocks gave way to deeper
soil. At the head of this lake, where a swift salmon river entered
the fjord, was the hall, set on rising ground above the clustering
houses of the town, and looking down over them to the anchorage and
the wharf for which we were making. Behind the hall rose a sheer
cliff, sheltering it and the other houses from the north and east.

All this I was to see plainly hereafter. Before me now in the dusk,
which was almost darkness, as the ship slid from the narrows into
the open, was the wide ring of mountains and the still lake, and
across that the twinkling lights of the town, doubled in the water
below them, and above them all the long row of high-set openings
under the eaves of the hall itself, glowing red with the flame of
fire and torches, and flickering as the smoke curled across and
through them.

I wondered what welcome was waiting for us from those who were
gathered there, as I stood with Gerda on my arm beside our
comrades, who watched the pilots as they steered. Bertric was
there, and Phelim, who by this time spoke the Norse well enough,
besides Asbiorn.

There was some spur of hill between us and part of the town, for
the light seemed to glide from behind it as we held on, but its
mass was lost in the shadows. I was watching the lights as they
came, one by one, to view, and then of a sudden, on the blackness
of the cliff above the hall, shone out a cross of light, tall and
bright and clear, as it were a portent, or as set there to guard
the place. So suddenly did it come that I started, and I heard
Father Phelim draw in his breath with some words which I could not
catch.

"What is that?" I asked Gerda, under my breath and pointing.

She laughed gently, and her hand tightened on my arm.

"We were wont to call it Thor's hammer," she said. "We see it from
time to time, and it brings luck. Now it greets me and you--but it
is not the old sign to me any longer."

"It is strange," said Bertric. "Once you called on Asa Thor--and
here is that one to whom you called, and yonder--"

"No, no," she said, clinging to me, "it is no longer Thor's
hammer."

"It is the sign which shall be held dear here," said Phelim. "It is
the sign that all good has come to this place."

"So may it be," said