an
armful of wood and threw it down. Then the nurse-girl looked him in the
face and said, 'Dreadful pale is this man. Why art thou so?' Then sang
Thormod--

Thou wonderest, sweet bloom, at me,
A man so hideous to see.
The arrow-drift o'ertook me, girl,
A fine-ground arrow in the whirl
Went through me, and I feel the dart
Sits, lovely lass, too near my heart.

The girl said, 'Let me see thy wound.' Then Thormod sat down, and the
girl saw his wounds, and that which was in his side, and saw that there
was a piece of iron in it; but could not tell where it had gone. In a
stone pot she had leeks and other herbs, and boiled them, and gave the
wounded men of it to eat. But Thormod said, 'Take it away; I have no
appetite now for my broth.' Then she took a great pair of tongs and
tried to pull out the iron; but the wound was swelled, and there was too
little to lay hold of. Now said Thormod, 'Cut in so deep that thou canst
get at the iron, and give me the tongs.' She did as he said. Then took
Thormod the gold bracelet off his hand and gave it the nurse-girl, and
bade her do with it what she liked.

'It is a good man's gift,' said he. 'King Olaf gave me the ring this
morning.'

Then Thormod took the tongs and pulled the iron out. But on the iron was
a barb, on which hung flesh from the heart, some red, some white. When
he saw that, he said, 'The king has fed us well. I am fat, even to the
heart's roots.' And so leant back and was dead.

I shall not insult your intelligence by any comment or even epithet of my
own. I shall but ask you was not this man your kinsman? Does not the
story sound, allowing for all change of manners as well as of time and
place, like a scene out of your own Bret Harte or Colonel John Hay's
writings; a scene of the dry humour the rough heroism of your own far
West? Yes, as long as you have your _Jem Bludsos_ and _Tom Flynns of
Virginia City_, the old Norse blood is surely not extinct, the old Norse
spirit is not dead.

LECTURE IV.
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD.

I wish to speak to you to-night about one of those old despotic empires
which were in every case the earliest known form of civilisation. Were I
minded to play the cynic or the mountebank, I should choose some corrupt
and effete despotism, already grown weak and ridiculous by its decay--as
did at last the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire--and, after raising a
laugh at the expense of the ol