y on your side in this matter, and
it behoves us who know the law, and who are bound to guide the law, to
set men at one again, and to ensue peace. 'Twere good counsel, then,
methinks, that we call together all the chiefs and talk the matter
over."

Then they go to the Court of Laws, and Njal spoke and said--

"Thee, Skapti Thorod's son and you other chiefs, I call on, and say,
that methinks our lawsuits have come into a deadlock, if we have to
follow up our suits in the Quarter Courts, and they get so entangled
that they can neither be pleaded nor ended. Methinks, it were wiser if
we had a Fifth Court, and there pleaded those suits which cannot be
brought to an end in the Quarter Courts."

"How," said Skapti, "wilt thou name a Fifth Court, when the Quarter
Court is named for the old priesthoods, three twelves in each quarter?"

"I can see help for that," says Njal, "by setting up new priesthoods,
and filling them with the men who are best fitted in each Quarter, and
then let those men who are willing to agree to it, declare themselves
ready to join the new priest's Thing."

"Well," says Skapti, "we will take this choice; but what weighty suits
shall come before the court?"

"These matters shall come before it," says Njal--"all matters of
contempt of the Thing, such as if men bear false witness, or utter a
false finding; hither, too, shall come all those suits in which the
Judges are divided in opinion in the Quarter Court; then they shall be
summoned to the Fifth Court; so, too, if men offer bribes, or take them,
for their help in suits. In this court all the oaths shall be of the
strongest kind, and two men shall follow every oath, who shall support
on their words of honour what the others swear. So it shall be also, if
the pleadings on one side are right in form, and the other wrong, that
the judgment shall be given for those that are right in form. Every suit
in this court shall be pleaded just as is now done in the Quarter Court,
save and except that when four twelves are named in the Fifth Court,
then the plaintiff shall name and set aside six men out of the court,
and the defendant other six; but if he will not set them aside, then the
plaintiff shall name them and set them aside as he has done with his own
six; but if the plaintiff does not set them aside, then the suit comes
to naught, for three twelves shall utter judgment on all suits. We shall
also have this arrangement in the Court of Laws, that those