man named Thorvald, the son of Eystein, bynamed
the Tinker: he was a wealthy man, a smith, and a skald; but he was
mean-spirited for all that. His brother Thorvard lived in the north
country at Fliot (Fleet); and they had many kinsmen,-- the Skidings they
were called,--but little luck or liking.

Now Thorvald the Tinker asked Steingerd to wife. Her folk were for it,
and she said nothing against it; and so she was wed to him in the very
same summer in which she left Bersi.

When Cormac heard the news he made as though he knew nothing whatever
about the matter; for a little earlier he had taken his goods aboard
ship, meaning to go away with his brother. But one morning early he rode
from the ship and went to see Steingerd; and when he got talk with her,
he asked would she make him a shirt. To which she answered that he had
no business to pay her visits; neither Thorvald nor his kinsmen would
abide it, she said, but have their revenge.

Thereupon he made his voice:--

(50)
"Nay, think it or thole it I cannot,
That thou, a young fir of the forest
Enwreathed in the gold that thou guardest,
Shouldst be given to a tinkering tinsmith.
Nay, scarce can I smile, O thou glittering
In silk like the goddess of Baldur,
Since thy father handfasted and pledged thee,
So famed as thou art, to a coward."

"In such words," answered Steingerd, "an ill will is plain to hear. I
shall tell Thorvald of this ribaldry: no man would sit still under such
insults."

Then sang Cormac:--

(51)
"What gain is to get if he threatens,
White goddess in raiment of beauty,
The scorn that the Skidings may bear me?
I'll set them a weft for their weaving!
I'll rhyme you the roystering caitiffs
Till rocks go afloat on the water;
And lucky for them if they loosen
The line of their fate that I ravel!"

Thereupon they parted with no blitheness, and Cormac went to his ship.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Cormac's Voyage To Norway.

The two brothers had but left the roadstead, when close beside their
ship, uprose a walrus. Cormac hurled at it a pole-staff, which struck
the beast, so that it sank again: but the men aboard thought that they
knew its eyes for the eyes of Thorveig the witch. That walrus came up
no more, but of Thorveig it was heard that she lay sick to death; and
indeed folk say that this was the end of her.

Then they sail