ad
completed any portion of the twentieth year. This was disputed by the
opposite party, who declared that he had committed many acts deserving
of outlawry since, and that, therefore, his sentence ought to be all the
longer. A new Lawman had been appointed, Steinn the son of Thorgest,
the son of Steinn the Far-traveller, the son of Thorir Autumn-mist.
The mother of Steinn the Lawman was Arnora, the daughter of Thord the
Yeller. He was a wise man, and was asked for his opinion. He told them
to make a search to find out whether this was the twentieth year of his
outlawry, and they did so. Then Thorir of Gard went to work to put every
possible difficulty in the way, and found out that Grettir had spent one
year of the time in Iceland, during which he must be held to have been
free of his outlawry. Consequently it had only lasted nineteen years.

The Lawman declared that no man could be outlawed for longer than twenty
years in all, even though he committed an outlaw's acts during that
time. But before that he would allow no man to be freed.

Thus the endeavour to remove his sentence broke down for the moment, but
there seemed a certainty of his being freed in the following summer. The
men of Skagafjord were little pleased at the prospect of Grettir being
freed, and they told Thorbjorn Angle that he must do one of the two,
resign his holding in the island or kill Grettir. He was in great
straits, for he saw no way of killing Grettir, and yet he wanted to keep
the island. He tried everything he could think of to get the better of
Grettir by force or by fraud or in any other way that he could.

CHAPTER LXXVIII. THORBJORN'S FOSTER-MOTHER

Thorbjorn Angle had a foster-mother named Thurid. She was very old and
of little use to mankind, but she had been very skilled in witchcraft
and magic when she was young and the people were heathen. Now she seemed
to have lost it all. Still, although the land was Christian, many sparks
of heathendom remained. It was not forbidden by the law of the land to
sacrifice or perform other heathen rites in private; only the one who
performed them openly was sentenced to the minor exile. Now it happened
to many as it is said: The hand turns to its wonted skill, and that
which we have learned in youth is always most familiar to us. So
Thorbjorn Angle, baffled in all his plans, turned for help to the
quarter where it would have been least looked for most people, namely,
to his foster-mother, a