The man was bound and guarded, and the march was continued.  Early the next morning two men were found together in a cottage, and they told the same tale.

“Little glory is there in marching against such a people,” said Estein.  “Bind them, and hasten on.”

About an hour later the little army emerged from a hillside forest, and saw below them a small merchant town.  The rude wooden houses straggled along the edge of a great frozen lake, whose snow-powdered surface stretched for miles and miles in an unbroken sheet of dazzling whiteness.  Between the shores and the outskirts of the woodlands lay a wide sweep of cultivated country.  Everywhere a thin coating of snow covered the ground, and the air was sharp enough to make the breath of the men rise like a cloud of steam as they marched in battle order down the slope.

“There are men in the town!” cried Helgi suddenly.  “I see the glint of the sun on weapons.  Thanks be to the gods, we shall have a fight!”

“Ay, they are coming out,” said Estein.  “Halt! we shall take advantage of the slope, and await them here.”

The men halted, and grasped their weapons, and in expectant silence their leaders watched a small troop defile out of the town.

“Call you that an army?” growled Ketill.  “There are barely a score of them.”

“Ay,” said Helgi, with a sigh, “there will be no fighting to-day.”

About twenty men, dressed in skins and fur coats and wooden helmets, and slenderly armed, had left the town, and now came slowly up the hill.  Their leader alone wore a burnished steel helmet, and carried a long halberd over his shoulder.  Immediately behind him walked two boys, and at the sight of them Helgi asked,- -

“What mean they by bringing boys against us?”

“Hostages,” suggested Estein laconically.

When this motley company had come within a hundred yards of them, they stopped, and their leader advanced alone.

As he drew near to the Norsemen, Estein stepped out a pace or two to meet him, but they stood so close that Helgi and Ketill could hear all that passed.  They saw that the stranger was a tall, elderly man with a clever face and a dignified bearing.

“Hail, Estein Hakonson!” he said.

“You know my name, it seems,” replied Estein, “and therein have the advantage of me.”

“My name is Thorar,” said the chief, speaking gravely and very courteously, “lawman of this region of Jemtland”—­he made a sweeping gesture with his hand as he said this—­“and a friend hitherto to the Northmen.”

“I know you by repute as a chief of high birth, and one who has long been faithful to my father.  Yet, methinks, it was something less than faithful to drive his scatt-gatherer from the country and slay his followers.”