"Without your
aid, we could not have lived a day longer."

And Gudrid, opening her eyes to see Helga's fair face bending over her
to put a wine cup to her lips, murmured faintly, "A Valkyria could not
look more beautiful to me than you do. Tell me what you are called, that
I may know what name to love you by."

"I am called Helga, Gilli's daughter," the shield-maiden answered, with
just an edge of bitterness on the last words.

Gudrid's gentle eyes opened wide with wonder and alarm.

"Not Helga the Fair of Trondhjem," she gasped, "who fled from Gilli to
his kinsfolk in Greenland? Alas, my unfortunate child!"

In the eagerness in which she clasped her hands, the wine-cup fell
clanging from Helga's hold. "Is he dead?" she cried, imploringly. "Only
tell me that, and I will serve you all the rest of my life! Is Gilli
dead?"

But Gudrid had sunk back in another faint. She lay with her eyes closed,
moaning and murmuring to herself.

Leif, biting sharply at his thick mustache, as he was wont to do when
excited, turned sharply on Thorir.

"What is the reason of this?" he demanded. "What are these tidings
concerning my kinswoman, which your wife hesitates to speak? Is Gilli of
Trondhjem dead?"

Thorir answered with great haste and politeness, "No, no; naught so bad
as that. Naught but what I expect can be easily remedied. But it appears
that when Gilli attempted to follow his daughter to Greenland, last
fall, he suffered a shipwreck and the loss of much valuable property,
barely escaping with his life. From this he drew the rash conclusion
that his daughter had become a misfortune to him, as some foreknowing
woman had once said she would. And he declared that since the maiden
preferred her poorer kinsfolk in Greenland, she might stay with them;
and--"

The words burst rapturously from Helga's lips: "And he disowned me?"

Thorir stared at her in astonishment. "Yes," he said, pityingly.

It was just as well that he had not attempted a longer answer, for he
never would have finished it. Madness seemed suddenly to fall upon the
ship. In the face of her disinheritance, the shield-maiden was radiant.
Down in the waist of the ship, two youths who had caught the words threw
up their hats with cheers. Leif Ericsson himself laughed loudly, and
snapped his fingers in derision.

"A mighty revenge!" he said. "My kinswoman could have received no
greater kindness at the churl's hands. Could she have accomplished it by
a dagger