ot
wit enough, I can rid you of my company. Wit is it he seeks?" she cried.
"The old broomstick that we buried yesterday had wit for you."

So she rode on ahead and looked not the road that he was on.

Poor Finnward followed on his horse, but the light of the day was gone
out, for his wife was like his life to him. He went six miles and was
true to his heart; but the seventh was not half through when he rode up
to her.

"Is it to be the goodwife's pleasure?" she asked.

"Aud, you shall have your way," says he; "God grant there come no ill of
it!"

So she made much of him, and his heart was comforted.

When they came to the house, Aud had the two chests to her own bed-place,
and gloated all night on what she found. Finnward looked on, and trouble
darkened his mind.

"Wife," says he at last, "you will not forget these things belong to
Asdis?"

At that she barked upon him like a dog.

"Am I a thief?" she cried. "The brat shall have them in her turn when
she grows up. Would you have me give her them now to turn her minx's
head with?"

So the weak man went his way out of the house in sorrow and fell to his
affairs. Those that wrought with him that day observed that now he would
labour and toil like a man furious, and now would sit and stare like one
stupid; for in truth he judged the business would end ill.

For a while there was no more done and no more said. Aud cherished her
treasures by herself, and none was the wiser except Finnward. Only the
cloak she sometimes wore, for that was hers by the will of the dead wife;
but the others she let lie, because she knew she had them foully, and she
feared Finnward somewhat and Thorgunna much.

At last husband and wife were bound to bed one night, and he was the
first stripped and got in. "What sheets are these?" he screamed, as his
legs touched them, for these were smooth as water, but the sheets of
Iceland were like sacking.

"Clean sheets, I suppose," says Aud, but her hand quavered as she wound
her hair.

"Woman!" cried Finnward, "these are the bed-sheets of Thorgunna--these
are the sheets she died in! do not lie to me!"

At that Aud turned and looked at him. "Well?" says she, "they have been
washed."

Finnward lay down again in the bed between Thorgunna's sheets, and
groaned; never a word more he said, for now he knew he was a coward and a
man dishonoured. Presently his wife came beside him, and they lay still,
but neither slept.

It might be