ew unsown like grass, and the capes looked like
crusted cow-pats they were so thick with deer, and the dew of the night
was honey-dew, so that of a morning a man might breakfast delicately off
the face of the meadows.

Full of such marvels, Biorn sought Leif and poured out his heart to him.
For the first time he spoke of the weird-wife's spaeing. If his fortune
lay in the west, there was the goal to seek. He would find the happy
country and reign over it. But Leif shook his head, for he had heard
the story before. "To get there you will have to ride over Bilrost,
the Rainbow Bridge, like the Gods. I know of the place. It is called
Gundbiorn's Reef and it is beyond the world."

All this befell in Biorn's eleventh summer. The winter which followed
brought ill luck to Hightown and notably to Ironbeard the King. For in
the autumn the Queen, that gentle lady, fell sick, and, though leeches
were sought for far and near, and spells and runes were prepared by all
who had skill of them, her life ebbed fast and ere Yule she was laid
in the Howe of the Dead. The loss of her made Thorwald grimmer and more
silent than before, and there was no feasting at the Yule high-tide and
but little at the spring merry-making. As for Biorn he sorrowed bitterly
for a week, and then, boylike, forgot his grief in the wonder of living.

But that winter brought death in another form. Storms never ceased, and
in the New Year the land lay in the stricture of a black frost which
froze the beasts in the byres and made Biorn shiver all the night
through, though in ordinary winter weather he was hardy enough to dive
in the ice-holes. The stock of meal fell low, and when spring tarried
famine drew very near. Such a spring no man living remembered. The snow
lay deep on the shore till far into May. And when the winds broke they
were cold sunless gales which nipped the young life in the earth. The
ploughing was backward, and the seed-time was a month too late. The
new-born lambs died on the fells and there fell a wasting sickness among
the cattle. Few salmon ran up the streams, and the sea-fish seemed to
have gone on a journey. Even in summer, the pleasant time, food was
scarce, for the grass in the pastures was poor and the cows gave little
milk, and the children died. It foreboded a black harvest-time and a
blacker winter.

With these misfortunes a fever rose in the blood of the men of Hightown.
Such things had happened before for the Norland was never m