s!

(_Enter_ BRAND _without arms and_ BRODDI _all armed_.)

_Broddi_.--You have collected a good and well-armed body of men?

_Brand_.--I have had great difficulty in gathering troops. I have only
my tenants and my servants, altogether eighty men.

_Broddi_.--And whilst I make the fort at Holar unconquerable, whilst I
break up the frozen ground, whilst I pour water over all the ramparts of
our stronghold so that they become like slippery ice--meanwhile you
have done nothing. You sing hymns in the churches, beat your breast, and
chant 'Miserere.' Your conduct is not becoming a chieftain.

_Jorun_.--You speak harshly to my husband because he wants peace before
all things.

_Broddi_.--Peace! Whoever heard of peace after violent dissensions,
except the battles be won or--lost?

_Brand_.--You know, Broddi, that I egged on neither you nor others to
take Thorolf Bjarnason's life. And yet have I done all in my power to
collect many men. I sent Deacon Sigurd and Helgi Skaftason----

_Broddi_.--The priest and the executioner?--and, of course, only these
two?

_Brand_.--Yes, I had but few men at home, at that time.

_Broddi_.--You do not know how to get a body of men together! You send
the priest with the crucifix in his hand. All know that he wishes peace,
and no one rises for him. You send the hangman with the axe on his
shoulder to remind people of his business, but you forget that with such
a fellow no one will speak. In such wise you will not get a pack of dogs
to follow you. But if you want to raise a great host you will have to
go out yourself with sixty men and kill two or three of the first that
refuse to follow you. Thus did Kolbein the Young collect his troops at
first, and because Kalf Guttormsson would not bear arms against Sighvat,
his good friend, both he and his son were slain.

_Jorun_.--How often the murder of my father and brother is mentioned,
and no one cares though I hear it.

_Brand_.--I have been heavily oppressed with care. I have been summoned
before the tribunal of God because of having violated a pledged truce;
and my kinswoman Helga will be intent on making me follow that summons.
And now the priest in my house has dreamed thrice in the same night that
I stood by his bedside and prayed God to receive my soul.

_Broddi_.--Dreams signify nothing. The summons you talk about I think
nothing but old women's notions. The tribunal of arms is the one I
believe in; they are to decide between us a