Stein took the saddle off his horse and went into the house to borrow a halter of Sira Benedikt. The other men shook their heads, saying that this time Olav had made a bad bargain.

“Oh well—” Olav shrugged his shoulders and gave a little laugh. “But I care not always to be so thrifty as to split a louse into four.”

He put his saddle on the horse he had bought and let Apalhvit trot behind. The other men stood and watched him; one or two of them gave a little sneering laugh. The first trial of strength between horse and rider came at the bend of the road. It looked as though Olav would be well warmed ere he reached home.

Ingunn sat sewing alone in the hearth-room when she heard the beat of hoofs on the rocky floor of the courtyard. She went to the outer door and looked at her husband in surprise: in the rarefied autumn sunlight he was holding in a strange and restive horse; his face was fiery red and both he and the horse were bespattered with the foam that covered the bridle, while the horse champed and pranced till the stony ground rang again, and would not stand still. Olav greeted her and the house-carl, who came up, with a laugh.

“I will tell you all when I come in,” said Olav; he leaped from the saddle and stayed by the house-carl who was to lead the new horse to the stable.

“What is it?” she asked in wonder when he came in. He stopped just inside the door—looking like a drunken man.

“Is the old man at home?” asked Olav.

“No, he went down to the sea—shall I send Tore for him?”

Olav laughed and closed the door behind him. Then he came forward, lifted his wife as one takes a child in one’s arms, and squeezed her till she gasped.

“Olav—” she cried in terror. “What has come over you?”

“Oh, naught else but that you are too fair a wife,” he muttered with the same drunken laugh, and pressed his heated face against hers till she thought he would break her neck.

Late in the afternoon Olav betook himself to the mill, and Ingunn went into the cook-house; she had a pan of cheese standing by the fire, below the bake-stone.

The lid could not have been fitted on tightly, so much ash had got in. And it smelt ill—had doubtless stood too long, but it would not curdle sooner. Ingunn could never get her cheeses to work in the right way: the cheeses she had made the week before had gone soft again and run over onto the shelf where she had put them to dry.

Her mouth twitched as she stood kneading the sticky, evil-smelling cheese in the pan, with slow and clumsy hands. She was no skilful housewife—all work was to her heavy and difficult, and accidents were always happening. Each new misfortune made her so utterly despondent—when would it strike Olav that his wife was incapable besides her other faults? At the end of a day like this, when everything she put her hand to had gone wrong, she felt bruised all over, as though from a number of falls.

He had not been drunken after all, Olav. At first she had sought comfort in the thought that he must have partaken more freely than was his wont of that ale of which their priest made such boast. But he had been quite sober. And her heart fluttered fitfully as she pondered—what could have come over Olav to make him so utterly unlike himself? Never had he been aught but kind and affectionate and tender in his love. At times she would fain have had him—not quite so calm and sober-minded.

The thought weighed heavily upon her: true enough, he was calm in his bearing, master of himself—as long as might be. But she had seen occasions when he lost his self-control. But even in that night of madness when the boy came to her and said he had slain Einar, she had felt his love for her as a safeguard. His rage she had seen once—when it was turned against herself; once she herself had lain cowering, mortally afraid, face to face with his white-hot anger. It was a thing she could not bear to think of—and she had not thought of it, till now. But now she recalled it, with such stifling vividness—But now she could not have done anything to make him angry?

She had felt so easy in these four months they had been married. Unconsciously she reckoned her marriage from the hour when her kinsmen in the presence of witnesses had given her into the hands of Olav Audunsson. He had been so good to her that the memory of all the terrible things that had befallen her on the eve of that event was now but as the shadow of a horrible dream. And she had been obliged to acknowledge the truth of what he said—Hestviken was far away; it had been easier than she could ever have imagined to forget what had happened there in the north. But at the same time she had striven to show him that she was grateful and loved him—unspeakably.—Surely, then, she could not have done anything to cause him to be so—strange—just now, when he came home. But then she was seized with terror at the thought of what might have caused it—

And yet that was foolish—for he had shown no sign of wrath; it had all been caresses, in a way, the whole of it. Only wild ones—and then he had played with her, roughly, mad with an ungovernable merriment that had scared her, for she was not used to seeing Olav thus.