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"Fire!" cried the old man "fire like that have I brought on my foes! I have burned them like rats; I have left their homesteads smouldering! Listen, Vandrad, and I shall tell thee of a deed that made my name known throughout all the Northland. Now," he added, "I am a Christian man, and my soul is safe with Christ. "Once I received an injury I swore I should avenge.
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?"
Long after King Estein had joined his fathers on the little holm beyond Hernersfiord, and Helgi, Earl of Askland, had become but a warlike memory, the skalds of Sogn still sang this tale of Vandrad the Viking.
He looked at her doubtfully, and then said, "Where is Vandrad? I would hear him sing." Then Osla started, and her heart smote her. "Vandrad, father?" she said gently. "He has been gone these eight months. Did you not know?" The hermit seemed hardly to comprehend her words. "Gone!" he repeated. "Why did you not tell me?" "Surely you knew," she said. "Why went he away? I would hear him sing.
"And I have to thank your daughter that I am not there now," Estein added. "What is your name?" "I am known as Vandrad, the son of a noble landowner in Norway." The old man looked for a moment as though he would have questioned him further on his family. Instead, he asked, "And why came you to these islands?" "For that, the wind and not I is answerable.
"Canst thou spare a tear, sweet Osla, When I sail from this fair land? Wilt thou dream of Vandrad sometimes When the waves boom on the strand? Can visions of a pleasant hour The march of time withstand?
We made a ring round the house and heaped faggots against the walls, and still they heard us not. It was a dark night, Vandrad, very dark, till we lit a fire that was seen by men in the outer islands. Then they heard us, they smelt the smoke, and they ran to the doors.
"I cannot tell you why," he went on, "but to-day I feel that my hour has come to rove again. I would that I might live here for ever, but I know it is not fated so." Then he sang his farewell song: "Canst thou spare a sigh, fair Osla? It is fated I must go. Wilt thou think of Vandrad ever When the sea winds hoarsely blow, Or will the memory of my love With absence fainter grow?
"I must have you too, Osla!" She started this time indeed, and for an instant the shock of surprise took thoughts and words away. "Vandrad!" she cried faintly, and then she was trembling in King Estein's arms. "Nay," he said, "no longer Vandrad, but rather Estein the Lucky!
"Wait for me, Helgi," he said, "the spell is on me still," and starting away suddenly he ran up the bank again. "Osla!" he cried, and stopped abruptly. "What means this, Vandrad?" she asked. Her eyes were wide open with troubled surprise, and looking into her upturned face he thought she never was so fair before. "They have come for me, Osla, and I must go. Farewell! remember me not."