“They asked us to let the women out, but we had come there to slay and not to spare.  They shrieked, Vandrad; they cried till the roof fell in, and then they died.  My soul is safe with God, and they are in outer darkness.  There they will shriek for ever.”

He paused for a moment, and then went on in the same strain of high excitement,—­

“Now you know me.  I am Thord the Tall, the burner of Olaf Hakonson.”

“And where are Snaekol Gunnarson and Thorfin of Skapstead?” Estein spoke with difficulty, and his right hand had closed on something in his belt.

“Both are dead.  They died heathens, and their souls are as hopelessly lost as the soul of Olaf Hakonson.  I am the last of the burners.”

The voice of Thord the Tall died away.  Estein bent forward, his hand left his side, and something in it gleamed in the firelight.

Suddenly the hermit started.

“Osla!  I hear Osla!” he said.

Estein thrust his dagger into its sheath, and bending in the doorway stepped out into the night.  Below the cell he saw a boat leaving the land, and right before him, in the clear, cool twilight, the form of Osla.

“Have you tired of my father’s company?” she asked, with a smile.

“I would be alone,” he answered, and walked quickly past her.

Now he knew the twice-heard voice, and remembered the fleeting face.

“You came to warn me, Olaf, and I knew you not!” he cried.  “I know you now—­too late!”

He paced the turf with hurried steps.  The sacred duty of revenge called him with a vehemence we cannot now realize.  He had sworn to let slip no chance of taking vengeance on the burners of his brother.  Often he had sought news of them, and often renewed his resolution; and now that he had found his foe, was he to idly suffer him to escape?

Yet he had been this man’s guest; he had eaten of his bread, and slept in his dwelling.  And his hands were tied by a stronger chain.  “Osla, Osla,” he cried, “for your sake I am faithless to my vows, and forgetful of my duty to my kindred!”

Then the memory of Thord the Tall, telling of the burning, rose fresh and strong, and again his hand sought his side, and his breath came fast, till the vision of Osla swept aside all other thoughts.

The time went by until the hour was hard on midnight.  Gradually his mind grew more composed.

“I am in the hands of destiny,” he said to himself.  “Let fate do with me what it will.”

All the northern sky was still red with the afterglow of sunset, creeping slowly eastwards against the dawn; land and sea lay clear and yet dim, for the light was ghostly as a phosphorescent chamber; the tide was slack, and lapped softly on the rocks; and everything in the world seemed tranquil.

“The end has come,” he said.

All at once, on the sheen of the sound, he spied a curious black mark, far out and vague.  Gradually it seemed to steal nearer, till Estein, looking at it keenly, forgot his thoughts in a rising curiosity.  Then it took shape, and faintly across the water came the splash of oars and the voices of men.  As they drew nearer, he crouched below a bank and watched their approach with growing wonder and something too of awe.