arg and slays the unarmed Atli, who is not avenged because it was
Grettir's business to look after the matter when he came home. But
Glam's curse so works that, though plaintiff in this case, he is
outlawed in his absence for the burning of the house above referred
to, in which he was quite guiltless; and when he lands in Iceland it
is to find himself deprived of all legal rights, and in such case that
no friend can harbour him except under penalty.

Grettir, as we might expect, is not much daunted by this complication
of evils, but he lies hid for a time at his mother's house and
elsewhere, not so much to escape his own dangers as to avenge Atli on
Thorbiorn Oxmain at the right moment. At last he finds it; and
Thorbiorn, as well as his sixteen-year-old son Arnor, who rather
disloyally helps him, is slain by Grettir single-handed. His plight
at first is not much worsened by this; for though the simple plan of
setting off Thorbiorn against Atli is not adopted, Grettir's case is
backed directly by his kinsmen and indirectly by the two craftiest men
in Iceland, Snorri the Godi and Skapti the Lawman, and the latter
points out that as Grettir had been outlawed _before_ it was decreed
that the onus of avenging Atli lay on him, a fatal flaw had been made
in the latter proceeding, and no notice could be taken of the death of
Thorbiorn at all, though his kin must pay for Atli. This fine would
have been set off against Grettir's outlawry, and he would have become
a freeman, had not Thorir of Garth, the father of the men he had
accidentally killed in the burning house, refused; and so the
well-meant efforts of Grettir's kin and friends fall through.

From this time till the end of his life he is a houseless outlaw,
abiding in all the most remote parts of the island--"Grettir's lairs,"
as they are called, it would seem, to this day--sometimes countenanced
for a short time by well-willing men of position, sometimes dwelling
with supernatural creatures,--Hallmund, a kindly spirit or
cave-dweller with a hospitable daughter, or the half-troll giant
Thorir, a person of daughters likewise. But his case grows steadily
worse. Partly owing to sheer ill-luck and Glam's curse, partly, as the
saga-writer very candidly tells us, because he "was not an easy man to
live withal," his tale of slayings and the feuds thereto appertaining
grows steadily. For the most part he lives by simple cattle-lifting
and the like, which naturally does not make h