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He could not know that she was so shy, nor that she had almost fainted when she had found him gone and herself left alone with uncle and the old lady. Maurits had never been shy. He did not know what torture it is. That breakfast, that breakfast! Uncle had as a beginning asked the old lady if she had heard the story of Sigrid the beautiful.
Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark, was my father, and I am the sister of King Sweyn of the Forked beard, who now reigns over all Denmark, and who has lately wedded with Queen Sigrid of Sweden." "Right well do I now remember you," returned Olaf. "And well do I mind that, at that same feast in Denmark, you scorned me because I had been a slave."
My child had lost her reason, and in her mad despair she had gone out one day and cast herself from the cliffs into the sea. Now Sigrid had left two children, and it was said that they were unhappy. So Rapp, searching for them, with intent to carry them off and bring them to me that I might be revenged upon their father, found them one day playing in a great rock tunnel in Gigha."
But while the wooden stairway was still creaking under his tread, Queen Sigrid called after him in bitterest anger: "Go, then, O proud and stubborn king. Go where you will. But remember this, that the insult you have offered me and the blow you have struck me shall be your death!"
"The ship that brought me hither was the ship of my brother, Rapp the Icelander. Him I bade go over to Gigha and fulfil for me my vengeance upon my enemy Roderic, and rescue my daughter. But the people secretly told him that Roderic had been cruel to Sigrid, and that her love for him had vanished as the morning mist.
Sigrid received the ring with joy; fancied what a collar it would make for her own fair neck; but noticed that her two goldsmiths, weighing it on their fingers, exchanged a glance. "What is that?" exclaimed Queen Sigrid. "Nothing," answered they, or endeavored to answer, dreading mischief.
It was most beautifully wrought and interwoven with scrolls and circles so delicate that all wondered how the hand of man could achieve such perfection. Everyone praised it exceedingly, and among others to whom Sigrid showed the ring were her own goldsmiths, two brothers. These handled it with more care than others had done, and weighed it in their hands as if they would estimate its value.
So she caused messengers to fare across the frontier into Norway to sing her praises, so that King Olaf might learn how fair she was, and how well suited to reign by his side. And it seemed that her messages had the effect that she wished. On a certain summer day Queen Sigrid sat at her chamber window, overlooking a wide and beautiful river that lay between her own kingdom and Norway.
But in these days even now told of it befell that Queen Gunnhild was stricken with an illness and died. King Sweyn, ever ambitious of winning great dominion, had a mind to take unto himself a new wife in the person of Queen Sigrid of Sweden. He was on the point of setting out to woo her when he heard by chance that King Olaf Triggvison was already bent upon a similar journey.
Shall we here tell an interesting and romantic story about one of Birger's brothers? He was a judge in East Gothland, his name being Bengt, and had fallen deeply in love with a damsel named Sigrid, whose family was not rich nor great, though she herself was so beautiful that she was widely known as Sigrid the Fair.
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