h them; but they set
themselves against it, and said that such were no journeys for women.
She said she would go indeed, "For so much I know of you, my sons,
that whetting is what you want." They said she must have her own way.

CHAP. LV

The Death of Bolli

[Sidenote: The journey] After that they rode away from home out of
Herdholt, the nine of them together, Thorgerd making the tenth. They
rode up along the foreshore and so to Lea-shaws during the early part
of the night. They did not stop before they got to Saelingsdale in the
early morning tide. There was a thick wood in the valley at that
time. Bolli was there in the out-dairy, as Halldor had heard. The
dairy stood near the river at the place now called Bolli's-tofts.
Above the dairy there is a large hill-rise stretching all the way down
to Stack-gill. Between the mountain slope above and the hill-rise there
is a wide meadow called Barni; it was there Bolli's house-carles were
working. Halldor and his companions rode across Ran-meads unto
Oxgrove, and thence above Hammer-Meadow, which was right against the
dairy. They knew there were many men at the dairy, so they got off
their horses with a view to biding the time when the men should leave
the dairy for their work. Bolli's shepherd went early that morning
after the flocks up into the mountain side, and from there he saw the
men in the wood as well as the horses tied up, and misdoubted that
those who went on the sly in this manner would be no men of peace. So
forthwith he makes for the dairy by the straightest cut in order to
tell Bolli that men were come there. Halldor was a man of keen sight.
He saw how that a man was running down the mountain side and making
for the dairy. He said to his companions that "That must surely be
Bolli's shepherd, and he must have seen our coming; so we must go and
meet him, and let him take no news to the dairy." They did as he bade
them. [Sidenote: Bolli prepares to meet them] An Brushwood-belly went
the fastest of them and overtook the man, picked him up, and flung him
down. Such was that fall that the lad's back-bone was broken. After
that they rode to the dairy. Now the dairy was divided into two parts,
the sleeping-room and the byre. Bolli had been early afoot in the
morning ordering the men to their work, and had lain down again to
sleep when the house-carles went away. In the dairy therefore there
were left the two, Gudrun and Bolli. They awoke with the din when the