halt live all the same, and be called a
better man, if thou betrayest not him to whom thou oughtest to behave
best."

Then she took a linen hood out of her bag, it was clotted with blood all
over, and torn and tattered, and said, "This hood, Hauskuld Njal's son,
and thy sister's son, had on his head when they slew him; methinks,
then, it is ill owing to stand by those from whom this mischief sprang".

"Well!" answers Ingialld, "so it shall be that I will not be against
Njal whatever follows after, but still I know that they will turn and
throw trouble on me."

"Now mightest thou," said Rodny, "yield Njal and his sons great help, if
thou tellest him all these plans."

"That I will not do," says Ingialld, "for then I am every man's dastard,
if I tell what was trusted to me in good faith; but it is a manly deed
to sunder myself from this quarrel when I know that there is a sure
looking for of vengeance; but tell Njal and his sons to beware of
themselves all this summer, for that will be good counsel, and to keep
many men about them."

Then she fared to Bergthorsknoll, and told Njal all this talk; and Njal
thanked her, and said she had done well, "for there would be more
wickedness in his falling on me than of all men else".

She fared home, but he told this to his sons.

There was a carline at Bergthorsknoll, whose name was Saevuna. She was
wise in many things, and foresighted; but she was then very old, and
Njal's sons called her an old dotard, when she talked so much, but still
some things which she said came to pass. It fell one day that she took a
cudgel in her hand, and went up above the house to a stack of vetches.
She beat the stack of vetches with her cudgel, and wished it might never
thrive, "wretch that it was!"

Skarphedinn laughed at her, and asked why she was so angry with the
vetch stack.

"This stack of vetches," said the carline, "will be taken and lighted
with fire when Njal my master is burnt, house and all, and Bergthora my
foster-child. Take it away to the water, or burn it up as quick as you
can."

"We will not do that," says Skarphedinn, "for something else will be got
to light a fire with, if that were foredoomed, though this stack were
not here."

The carline babbled the whole summer about the vetch-stack that it
should be got indoors, but something always hindered it.

CHAPTER CXXIV.

OF PORTENTS.

At Reykium on Skeid dwelt one Runolf Thorstein's son. His son's name was