was lying in the stern sheets covered up with clothes. Then
she began to stir and said:

"These men are brave and unfortunate; there is much difference between
you; you offer them good and they refuse everything. There are few more
certain tokens of evil than not to know how to accept the good. Now I
say this of you, Grettir, that you be deprived of health, of all good
luck and fortune, of all protection and counsel, ever the more the
longer you live. I wish that your days may be less happy in the future
than they have been in the past."

When Grettir heard that he started violently and said: "What fiend is
that in the ship with them?"

Illugi said: "I think that must be the old woman, Thorbjorn's
foster-mother."

"Curse the hag!" he said. "I could have thought of nothing worse!
Nothing that was ever said startled me more than her words, and I know
that some evil will befall me from her and her spells. She shall have
something to remind her of her visit here."

Then he took up an enormous stone and threw it down into the boat. It
fell into the heap of clothes. Thorbjorn had not thought that any man
could throw so far. A loud scream was heard, for the stone had struck
her thigh and broken it.

Illugi said: "I wish you had not done that."

"Do not blame me for it," said Grettir. "I fear it has been just too
little. One old woman would not have been too great a price for us two."

"How will she pay for us? That will be a small sum for the pair of us."

Thorbjorn then returned home; no greeting passed between them when
he left. He spoke to the old woman and said: "It has happened as I
expected. Little credit has the journey to the island brought you. You
have been injured for the rest of your life, and we have no more
honour than we had before; we have to endure unatoned one insult after
another."

She answered: "This is the beginning of their destruction; I say that
from this time onwards they will go downwards. I care not whether I live
or not, if I do not have vengeance for the injury they have done me."

"You seem to be in high spirits, foster-mother," he said. Then they
arrived home. The woman lay in bed for nearly a month before her leg was
set and she was able to walk again. Men laughed much over the journey of
Thorbjorn and the old woman. Little luck had come from the meetings with
Grettir, first at the peace declaration at the Thing, next when Haering
was killed, and now the third time when the woman's