f the bodies of his foes, you call _that_ ending well. So
died Grettir the Strong. Even from a boy he was strong and passionate,
short of temper, quick of stroke, but loyal, brave, and always unlucky.
His worst luck began after he slew Glam. This Glam was a wicked heathen
herdsman, who would not fast on Christmas Eve. So on the hills his dead
body was found, swollen as great as an ox, and as blue as death.

What killed him they did not know. But he haunted the farmhouse, riding
the roof, kicking the sides with his heels, killing cattle and destroying
all things. Then Grettir came that way, and he slept in the hall. At
night the dead Glam came in, and Grettir arose, and to it they went,
struggling and dashing the furniture to bits. Glam even dragged Grettir
to the door, that he might slay him under the sky, and for all his force
Grettir yielded ground. Then on the very threshold he suddenly gave way
when Glam was pulling hardest, and they fell, Glam undermost. Then
Grettir drew the short sword, "Kari's loom," that he had taken from a
haunted grave, and stabbed the dead thing that had lived again. But, as
Glam lay a-dying in the second death, the moon fell on his awful eyes,
and Grettir saw the horror of them, and from that hour he could not
endure to be in the dark, and he never dared to go alone. This was his
death, for he had an evil companion who betrayed him to his enemies; but
when they set on Grettir, though he was tired and sick of a wound, many
died with him. No man died like Grettir the Strong, nor slew so many in
his death.

Besides those Sagas, there is the best of all, but the longest, "Njala"
(pronounced "Nyoula"), the story of Burnt Njal. That is too long to
sketch here, but it tells how, through the hard hearts and jealousy of
women, ruin came at last on the gentle Gunnar, and the reckless
Skarphedin of the axe, "The Ogress of War," and how Njal, the wisest, the
most peaceful, the most righteous of men, was burned with all his house,
and how that evil deed was avenged on the Burners of Kari.

The site of Njal's house is yet to be seen, after these nine hundred
years, and the little glen where Kari hid when he leaped through the
smoke and the flame that made his sword-blade blue. Yes, the very black
sand that Bergthora and her maids threw on the fire lies there yet, and
remnants of the whey they cast on the flames, when water failed them.
They were still there beneath the earth when an Engli