ld put on his skees and
started for a wood that was back from shore. Down the mountains he went,
twenty, thirty feet at a slide, leaping over chasms a hundred feet
across. In his scarlet cloak he looked like a flash of fire. The wind
shot past him howling. His eyes danced at the fun.

"It is like flying," he thought and laughed. "I am an eagle. Now I
soar," as he leaped over a frozen river.

He saw a slender ash growing on top of a high rock.

"That is the handle for 'Foes'-fear,'" he said.

The rock stood up like a ragged tower, but he did not stop because of
the steep climb. He threw off his skees and thrust his hands and feet
into holes of the rock and drew himself up. He tore his jacket and cut
his leather leggings and scratched his face and bruised his hands, but
at last he was on the top. Soon he had chopped down the tree and had cut
a straight pole ten feet long and as big around as his arm. He went
down, sliding and jumping and tearing himself on the sharp stones. With
a last leap he landed near his skees. As he did so a lean wolf jumped
and snapped at him, snarling. Harald shouted and swung his pole. The
wolf dodged, but quickly jumped again and caught the boy's arm between
his sharp teeth. Harald thought of the spear-point in his belt. In a
wink he had it out and was striking with it. He drove it into the wolf's
neck and threw him back on the snow, dead.

"You are the first to feel the tooth of 'Foes'-fear,'" he said, "but I
think you will not be the last."

[Illustration: "_He drove it into the wolf's neck_"]

Then without thinking of his torn arm he put on his skees and went
leaping home. He went straight to the smithy and smoothed his pole and
drove it into the haft of the spear-point. He hammered out a gold band
and put it around the joining place. He made nails with beautiful heads
and drove them into the pole in different places.

"If it is heavy it will strike hard," he said.

Then he weighed the spear in his hand and found the balancing point and
put another gold band there to mark it.

Thorstein came in while he was working.

"A good spear," he said.

Then he saw the torn sleeve and the red wound beneath.

"Hello!" he cried. "Your first wound?"

"Oh, it is only a wolf-scratch," Harald answered.

"By Thor!" cried Thorstein, "I see that you are ready for better wounds.
You bear this like a warrior."

"I think it will not be my last," Harald said.

[Illustration]

Harald is K