with Helgi and Finnbogi, and a crew of 35 men.
There were also a number of women. The purpose was not to found a colony
but to cut timber. The brothers arrived first at Leif's huts and had
begun carrying in their provisions and tools, when Freydis, arriving
soon afterward, ordered them off the premises. They had no right, she
said, to occupy her brother's houses. So they went out and built other
huts for their party a little farther from the shore. Before their
business was accomplished "winter set in, and the brothers proposed to
have some games for amusement to pass the time. So it was done for a
time, till discord came among them, and the games were given up, and
none went from one house to the other; and things went on so during a
great part of the winter." At length came the catastrophe. Freydis one
night complained to her husband that the brothers had given her evil
words and struck her, and insisted that he should forthwith avenge the
affront. Presently Thorvard, unable to bear her taunts, was aroused to a
deed of blood. With his followers he made a night attack upon the huts
of Helgi and Finnbogi, seized and bound all the occupants, and killed
the men one after another in cold blood. Five women were left whom
Thorvard would have spared; as none of his men would raise a hand
against them, Freydis herself took an axe and brained them one and all.
In the spring of 1012 the party sailed for Brattahlid in the ship of
the murdered brothers, which was the larger and better of the two.
Freydis pretended that they had exchanged ships and left the other party
in Vinland. With gifts to her men, and dire threats for any who should
dare tell what had been done, she hoped to keep them silent. Words were
let drop, however, which came to Leif's ears, and led him to arrest
three of the men and put them to the torture until they told the whole
story. "'I have not the heart,' said Leif, 'to treat my wicked sister as
she deserves; but this I will foretell them [Freydis and Thorvard] that
their posterity will never thrive.' So it went that nobody thought
anything of them save evil from that time."

[Sidenote: The whole story is eminently probable.]

With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring
or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end
here.[191] Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober,
straightforward, and eminently probable story. We may not be able to say
with c