st music on the jealous ears of Leif's followers.
Thorhild leaned back from her food and watched him with open pride,--and
though Eric kept his face still turned away, he set his ear forward so
that he should hear everything.

Alwin was almost beside himself with nervousness. "If the crash does not
come soon, I shall go out of my wits," he whispered to Rolf.

The Wrestler turned upon him a face of such unusual excitement that he
was amazed. "Do you not see?" he whispered. "There will not be any
crash. I have just begun to understand. It was this he meant when he
spoke to you of gaining their friend-ship that they might hear him
willingly. Do you not see?"

Alwin's relief was so great that at first he dared not believe it. When
the truth of it dawned upon him, he was overcome with wonder and
admiration. In those days, nine men out of every ten could draw their
swords and rave and die for their principles; it was only the tenth man
that was strong enough to keep his hand off his weapon, or control his
tongue and live to serve his cause.

"Luck obeys his will as the helm his hand. I shall never worry over him
again," he said contentedly, as with the others he waited in the
courtyard for Leif to come out of the feasting-hall.

Sigurd laughed gayly. "Do you know what I just overheard in the crowd?
Some of Thorkel's men were praising Leif, and one of Eric's churls
thought it worth while to boast to them how he had known the Lucky One
when he was a child. Certainly the tide is beginning to turn."

"Leif Ericsson is an ingenious man," Rolf said, with unusual decision.
"I take shame upon me that ever I doubted his wisdom."

Egil uttered the kind of sullen grunt with which he always prefaced a
disagreeable remark. "Ugh! I do not agree with you. I think his behavior
was weak-kneed. Knowing their hatred against the word Christian, all the
more would I have dinged it into their ears; that they might not think
they had got the better of me. Now they believe he has become ashamed of
his faith and deserted it."

The three broke in upon him in an angry chorus. Alwin said sternly: "You
speak in a thoughtless way, Egil Olafsson. You forget that he still
wears the crucifix upon his breast. How can they believe that he has
forgotten his faith or given it up, when they cannot look at him without
seeing also the sign of his God?"

Egil turned away, silenced.

This feast of Thorkel Farserk was the first of a long line of such
event