ould stop her she was outdoors racing through the snow. Thorstan
shouted to his host, who came to him in a hurry. "She's gone," said
Thorstan Red. Thorstan Black and he went out together, but by now she
had passed through the garth and was deep in the snow beyond. They got
her home at last, but she was quite mad and fought against them all the
way.

They put her to bed and kept her there by main force until she was
exhausted. They were up with her all night, and she died in the small
hours of the morning. There was nothing for it but to bury her in the
snow.

Gudrid laid her out while Thorstan and his host were making the coffin.
She put candles at her head and feet in the Christian fashion, with a
cross of wood between her hands. Then she knelt by the bed to watch
the corpse. It was piercingly cold, and she grew numb with it, and
then drowsy. It is likely that she dropped off to sleep as she lay,
for she came to herself with a start and saw the corpse sitting up,
staring with open and glassy eyes. Her heart stood still, she neither
felt nor thought. How long they were, the living and the dead, staring
at each other, Gudrid could never have told--she was incapable of
moving, being frozen with terror and cold. Presently the dead woman's
mouth opened, as if she were going to speak; and then her head fell
forward and she dropped. Gudrid staggered to her feet and ran out of
the house. She found the men in the outhouse, and caught Thorstan
Black by the wrist. Her face told her story; it was no longer that of
a sane woman. Thorstan went back with her.

That night they buried Grimhild in the snow; and Thorstan Red took the
sickness. He told Gudrid of it when they were in bed. He held her
closely in his arms and spoke with passion: "My love, I am sick, and it
may go hard with me. Remember now what I say--that the thing which I
may be is not I. Be not afraid of it. You have had the best I could
be--and it was you who made me. Remember what we have been, and think
of me as dead already. And when I am dead, take my body back to
Ericsfrith."

She clung to him, but not with tears. Tears were denied her now. The
cold had mastered even them. For now she knew what must come.

XXI

The Greenland sickness took mainly the same course, varying with the
patient's personal quality. It began with a high fever, intense
surface irritation; there ensued violent rheumatic pains, mental
alienation, delirium