home?"

"She bade me home with her to fare.
A steed she gave me, life and peace."

"Great will your life be and troublous," said Vermund; "but now you
have learnt to beware of your foes. I cannot keep you here, for it would
rouse the enmity of many powerful men against me. Your best way is to
seek your kinsmen; there are not many who will be willing to take you in
if they can do anything else; nor are you one who will easily follow the
will of another man."

Grettir remained for a time in Vatnsfjord and went thence to the Western
fjords and tried several of the leading men there, but something always
happened to prevent their taking him in.

CHAPTER LIII. GRETTIR WINTERS IN LJARSKOGAR WITH THORSTEINN KUGGASON

During the autumn Grettir returned to the South and did not stop till he
came to his kinsman Thorsteinn Kuggason in Ljarskogar, who welcomed
him. He accepted Thorsteinn's invitation to stay the winter with him.
Thorsteinn was a man who worked very hard; he was a smith, and kept a
number of men working for him. Grettir was not one for hard work, so
that their dispositions did not agree very well. Thorsteinn had had a
church built on his lands, with a bridge from his house, made with much
ingenuity. Outside the bridge, on the beam which supported it, rings
were fastened and bells, which could be heard from Skarfsstadir half a
sea-mile distant when any one walked over the bridge. The building of
the bridge had cost Thorsteinn, who was a great worker in iron, much
labour. Grettir was a first-rate hand at forging the iron, but was not
often inclined to work at it. He was very quiet during the winter so
that there is not much to relate.

The men of Hrutafjord heard that Grettir was with Thorsteinn, and
gathered their forces in the spring. Thorsteinn then told Grettir that
he must find some other hiding-place for himself, since he would not
work. Men who did nothing did not suit him.

"Where do you mean me to go to?" asked Grettir.

Thorsteinn told him to go South to his kinsmen, but to return to him if
he found them of no use.

Grettir did so. He went to Borgarfjord in the South to visit Grim the
son of Thorhall, and stayed with him till the Thing was over. Grim sent
him on to Skapti the Lawman at Hjalli. He went South over the lower
heaths and did not stop before he reached Tunga, where he went to
Thorhall, the son of Asgrim the son of Ellidagrim, and paid few visits
to the farms around. Th