But all this availed but little.

And now Olav Audunsson remembered them so vividly—the two old men who used to appear at the door of the closet. When the madman had had a fit and struggled till he was faint and calm again, his father led him outside to sun him if the weather suited.

First the great-grandfather entered—a giant in stature, with long thick hair and a beard that fell over his chest; there was still as much black as white in it. He helped his son out, putting an arm about his neck and bending him, lest he should strike his face against the frame of the door. The madman had not the wit to turn aside from anything, but went straight on.

Torgils Foulbeard seemed a small man, for he was shrunken and bent. His whole head was overgrown with hair; the beard reached up to the eyes. All this tangle of his was matted with filth, grey and yellow of every dirty shade; from the midst of it shone the great eyes, pale greyish-green like sea-water, bloodshot in the whites, with an uncanny stare, and the nose small, straight and finely shaped, but red; it had been frostbitten one winter night when he had slipped out unknown to his father. But when old Olav had taken his son to the bath-house, cleansed him with lye and sand, and combed his hair, the whole shaggy head of Torgils shone silvery white and soft as a great tuft of bog-cotton. Torgils looked much older than his father.

Old Olav fed him as though he had been a child. Sometimes he had to shake and beat Torgils to make him open his mouth; at other times the trouble was that he would not shut it again, but let the food run out upon his beard. His father could get him to take meat and solid food by stuffing mouthfuls between Torgils’s teeth and then thrusting his face close to his son’s and chewing with empty jaws, up and down with all his force—then it might be that the madman mimicked him and chewed too.

Aasa sighed when she saw it. It was her charge to be like a foster-mother to young Olav, and he slept in her bed. But Aasa was more minded to herd Foulbeard and tend him, she as well as the great-grandfather. Koll, the old house-carl, was the only one who had care of the boy Olav.—Other than these four had not been dwelling at the manor, that Olav could remember. There were some who came and worked on the farm and down by the waterside.—Like enough the decline of Hestviken had already begun in those years. And after Olav Ingolfsson took over the conduct of the place, it had gone steadily downhill.

Now, farming had never been the main thing at Hestiviken; but neither Olav Ribbung in the last years of his life, nor Olav Ingolfsson had made such use of the sea as had been the custom here from old time. Then it came about that the rightful owner was outlawed, and the larger craft that still belonged to the place were seized by the King’s officers. Olav Ingolfsson had never succeeded in providing new boats, nor yet in restoring the herds of cattle and making good the number of horses.

Olav guessed that the heritage that had fallen to him on the death of his father, Audun Ingolfsson, was so great that he would have been a very rich man at that time; but he himself had not known this and Steinfinn had never made any inquiries on his behalf. And even before his outlawry the estate had greatly shrunk. Now he owned no more than his ancestral manor and some farm-lands in the surrounding district, with others over in Hudrheim, across the fiord. He had sold the udal estate in Elvesyssel that had come to him from his grandmother, when he had to make atonement and pay weregild for the slaying of Einar Kolbeinsson; but there was still so much money owing to him by the monks of Dragsmark, who had bought most of the land, that he could again fit out ships and resume the trading by water.

And at that time there were not so many franklins in the country round the Oslo Fiord who possessed their udal estates whole and undivided. A great part of their property had come into the hands of the great landlords, or into those of the King or the Church. So Olav Audunsson of Hestviken might nevertheless be reckoned a man of substance and leading in his native district—and as such he was honoured as was meet, when at last he returned to his ancestral home.

Folk judged that he had shown himself generous when he took over his property from the aged man who had been his guardian and had acquitted himself so ill of his trust. But none had heard Olav complain of this, and he showed his namesake filial respect. And when certain men tried to find out what Olav himself thought, and asked how he had found his affairs situated, Olav replied very soberly: “Not well.” But it could not have turned out otherwise—with the doom that had fallen on himself—and even before that the work of this place must have been more than Olav Ingolfsson could accomplish, crippled as he was. One of Olav Half-priest’s legs had been broken, so that it was quite stiff and the foot was turned outward; he was very lame and could not move without a staff, and his stiff and straddling leg made it difficult for him to sit a horse or travel in a boat.

Olav Ingolfsson was a good deal more than threescore winters and he looked older yet—he seemed old as the hills. He was tall and thin and bent; his face was narrow and well-featured, with a fine curved nose—the younger Olav had a feeling that his namesake was not unlike his own father, so far as he remembered him. But Olav Ingolfsson was bald as a stone, with red and bleary eyes; the skin hung in shrivelled puckers under his eyes, on his shrunken cheeks, and below his chin. To cure the pain in his lame leg he used dogskin and catskin and many kinds of unguents. Whether from this or other causes, there was always a peculiar smell about the old man—as of mice—and the closet where he slept smelt of mice.

He was a son of Olav Ribbung’s twin brother, Ingolf Alavsson, priest of St. Harvard’s Church at Oslo.