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"But one man in the world has the right to say where Helga shall be given in marriage; he is her father, Gilli of Trondhjem. Already I have done him a wrong in permitting, by my carelessness, that one of thrall-estate should steal his daughter's love. In honor, I can do no less than guard the maiden safely until the time when he can dispose of her as pleases him.
But Gudrid had sunk back in another faint. She lay with her eyes closed, moaning and murmuring to herself. Leif, biting sharply at his thick mustache, as he was wont to do when excited, turned sharply on Thorir. "What is the reason of this?" he demanded. "What are these tidings concerning my kinswoman, which your wife hesitates to speak? Is Gilli of Trondhjem dead?"
Remember the old saying, 'If a man's time has not come, something is sure to aid him. There is another fate in store for you than to lose your life in this matter, or you would have died when Leif struck you down. I love the cap that saved you! We will not talk about dying, but only of our hopes. I have planned how Gilli may be made useful, so that on his vessel you can escape to Norway."
They were quite unwilling to go, and indeed waited until we were ready to start, and were most anxious for us to go to the East again. "Gilli nappa," they assured us, was to be found, making their meaning clear by tracing in the sand a winding line to represent a creek; and when at the end I drew a lake, they were highly pleased, and grunted and snapped their fingers in approval.
"I ask you to tell me what manner of man this Gilli is?" It happened that Alwin asked nothing better than a chance to free his mind. He answered instantly: "Gilli of Trondhjem is a low-minded man who has gained great wealth, and is so greedy for property that he would give the nails off his hands and the tongue out of his head to get it. He is an overbearing churl."
So Gilli said that Hoskuld should come on and have a look, if he would care to buy any of these women. Hoskuld did so. They sat all together across the booth. Hoskuld looks carefully at these women. He saw a woman sitting out by the skirt of the tent, and she was very ill-clad. Hoskuld thought, as far as he could see, this woman was fair to look upon.
"Is it not well fitted to succeed? You can escape to Norway as I planned, and after that you can easily reach Normandy. All that you lack is gold, and Leif and Gilli have covered me with that." His face kindled as he mused on it. "It sounds possible.
In a flash of memory, Alwin saw again Brother Ambrose's cell, and his rebellious self toiling at the desk; and he marvelled that in this far-off place and time that toil was to be of use to him. "To some small degree I can," he answered. "I learned in my boyhood; but last summer, on the dairy farm of Gilli of Trondhjem, I practised on sheep-skins " "Gilli of Trondhjem?" Leif repeated.
After peering at him curiously for awhile, as though trying to divine his wishes, his shrewd old foster-father put aside the chess-board on which they had been playing, and hobbled over and laid a soothing hand on the girl's arm. "Speak you of Gilli?" he inquired. "Tell to us how he has ill-treated you." It was only very slightly that the pause had cooled Helga's valor.
And it must be that her plan possessed some of the advantages she claimed for it, for it came to pass that, on the same day that Gilli and his daughter set sail for Norway, a fair-skinned thrall with a shaven head disappeared from Greenland so completely that even Kark's keen eyes would have found it impossible to trace him.
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