Olav like Sira Benedikt better and better. Then their talk fell upon Olav Ingolfsson, and the priest praised the young man for having shown such loving-kindness toward one who had misgoverned his affairs so ill. Olav answered that it was his own outlawry that was chiefly to blame for the neglected state of Hestviken; the old man had doubtless done his best, seeing that he was a cripple and ailing. But indeed he held old Olav to be a remarkably wise and holy man.

“That addle-pate?” said the priest.

Olav said nothing.

The priest went on: “Holiness, I trow, he had good cause to seek—to judge by the fellows he resorted to in his youth, his holiness cannot have been much to boast of. And were he wise, he would think and speak more of Christ and Mary Virgin, and less of witchcraft and spectres and mermen and water-wraiths—would pray, rather than practise these sorceries and incantations of his—I marvel whether much of what he deals with be not downright heresy. But he came out of school a half-taught priestling—and the half he had learned was learned wrong. It may be diverting to listen to his tales some evening or other—but you seem to be a man of sense, Olav Audunsson, you surely do not believe all his preaching—?”

Ah, thought Olav, now he knew it. And in fact he thought he had already suspected how it was. Aloud he said with something like a smile:

“There would seem to be no very warm friendship between you and my kinsman?”

The priest replied: “I have never liked him—but that is not merely because he was foster-brother of him who wronged me and mine most grievously. And none of us bore hatred to the other men of Hestviken—they were brave and honourable, all but he. You may see that yourself, Olav—I have liked you since I saw you for the first time, and I was minded that you should see I wish you well, and I think myself that the old enmity between us of Eiken and you of Hestviken should now be buried and forgotten. Not that we ever counted Olav Ribbung and his other sons our enemies—but we kept out of each other’s way as much as we could, as you may well suppose.”

Olav busied himself with wiping off some ale he had spilt on his jerkin; he did not look up as he asked:

“I know not what you mean, Sira Benedikt. I am but newly come home and am strange to these parts—I have never heard aught of this enmity between your kindred and mine.”

Sira Benedikt seemed greatly surprised, and a little embarrassed as well. “I thought surely Olav Half-priest had spoken to you of this?”

Olav shook his head.

“Then ’tis better I tell you myself.” The priest sat in thought awhile, jogging the little dipper that floated in the ale-bowl and making it sail round.

“Did you look at those fair children of mine, the little maids that came in here, Olav?”

“Indeed they were fair. And were it not that I have a young bride waiting for me in the Upplands, I had used my eyes better while your kinswomen were here, Sira!” said Olav with a little smile.

“If I guess your meaning aright,” replied the priest, and he too smiled, but with a troubled look, “you cannot be aware that they are your own kinswomen, and near of kin too?”

Olav turned his eyes upon the priest and waited.

“You are second cousins. Torgils Foulbeard was the father of their father. He ruined my sister—”

Involuntarily Olav’s face was convulsed with horror. Sira Benedikt saw it, guessed the young man’s thought, and said:

“Nay, ’twas before God took his wits from Torgils, or the Evil One, whom he had followed so faithfully, while sin and lust tempted him. Ay, God knows I am not an impartial man when I speak of Olav Half-priest; he and Torgils were foster-brothers, and Olav backed the other through thick and thin. Olav Ribbung would compel Torgils to marry Astrid; he was an honourable, resolute, and loyal man—and when Torgils left her to her shame with his bastard son, while he himself kept to his leman in Oslo and would marry her, Olav Ribbung commanded his son to come hither. Ingolf, your grandfather, and Olav’s daughters, and Ivar Staal, his son-in-law, all said they would not sit at meat with Torgils nor speak to him while he held fast to his purpose. But Torgils was living with the priest, the father of Olav Ingolfsson—the more shame to them that they received him; one was a priest and the other was to be one.

“Ay, and the end was that my father and brothers accepted fines and made atonement with the Hestvik men when we saw that neither Olav Ribbung nor Ingolf could do aught to shake Torgils or force him to make amends for Astrid’s misfortune. ’Twas the better and more Christian way—that is true. But had I been of an age to bear arms, I know full sure I would not have rested till I had laid Torgils low—I had done it even if I had been a priest, ordained to the service of God. I have hated that man so that—God sees my heart, and He knows it. But He knows too, I ween, that the hardest thing He can require of a man is that he shall not avenge his kinswoman’s honour with the sword.—I was ten years old when it happened. Astrid had been to me as a mother; she was the eldest of our family, and I was the youngest. I shared a bed with her that summer: she wept and wept; I know not how it was she did not weep herself to death. I tell you, Olav, the man who can forgive such a thing from his heart, him I would call a holy man.”

The priest sat in silence. Olav, still as a rock, waited for him to say more.