by
turning his back upon them and inviting Robert Sans-Peur to take the
German's place at the chess-board.

In a daze of bewilderment, Sigurd let Rolf lead him away. "What can he
mean by such an ending?" he marvelled, as soon as it was safe to voice
his thoughts. "How comes it that he will stop before he has found out
her real motive? It cannot be that he will drop it thus. Did you not see
the black look he gave me as I left?" He raised his eyes to Rolf's face,
and drew back resentfully. "What are you smiling at?" he demanded.

"At your stupidity," Rolf laughed into his ear. "Do you not see that he
believes he has found out her real motive?" As Sigurd continued to
stare, the Wrestler shook him to arouse his slumbering faculties.
"Simpleton! He thinks it was for love of you that Helga fled from
Norway!"

"_Nom du diable_!" breathed Sigurd. Yet the longer he thought of it, the
more clearly he saw it. By and by, he drew a breath of relief that ended
in a laugh. "And he thinks to make me envious by putting my Norman
friend before me! Do you see? He in-tends it as a punishment. By Saint
Michael, it seems almost too amusing to be true!"

CHAPTER XXV

"WHERE NEVER MAN STOOD BEFORE"

Wit is needful
To him who travels far:
At home all is easy.
Ha'vama'l

Four days of threading fog-thickets and ploughing over watery wastes,
and the stanch little vessel pushed her way into sight of the first of
the unknown lands. It towered up ahead like a storm-cloud, bleak and
barren-looking as Greenland itself. From its inhospitable heights and
glaciers gleaming coldly in the sunshine, they knew it at once for the
last-seen land of Biorn's narrative.

"It looks to me like a good omen that we are to begin where Biorn left
off," Rolf observed to one of the men engaged in lowering the ship's
boat.

The fellow was a stalwart Icelander who had every current superstition
at his tongue's end, and was even accredited with the gift of second
sight. He hunched his shoulders sceptically, as he bent over the ropes.

"It is my opinion that good omens have little to do with this land," he
returned. "It bears every resemblance to the Giant Country which Thor
visited."

"I believe it is Helheim itself," quavered Kark.

The Wrestler glanced at the thrall's blanching cheeks and laughed a long
soft laugh. Such a display was one of the few things that moved him to
mirth. Suddenly he caught up the bowerman as one pick