an innumerable flotilla of smaller
crafts and boats. Many of the men were well armed, not only with
first-rate weapons, but with complete suits of excellent mail of the
kinds peculiar to the period--such as shirts of leather, with steel
rings sewed thickly over them, and others covered with steel scales--
while of the poorer bonders and the thralls some wore portions of
defensive armour, and some trusted to the thick hides of the wolf, which
were more serviceable against a sword-cut than many people might
suppose. All had shields, however, and carried either swords, bills,
spears, javelins, axes, or bows and arrows, so that, numbering as they
did, about a thousand men, they composed a formidable host.

While these rowed away over the fiord to the Springs to make war or
peace--as the case might be--with King Harald, a disappointed spirit was
left behind in Horlingdal.

"I'm sure I cannot see why I should not be allowed to go too," said
little Alric, on returning to Haldorstede, after seeing the fleet set
forth. "Of course I cannot fight so well as Erling _yet_, but I can do
_something_ in that way; and can even face up to a full-grown man when
occasion serves, as that red-haired Dane knows full well, methinks, if
he has got any power of feeling in his neck!"

This was said to Herfrida, who was in the great hall spreading the board
for the midday meal, and surrounded by her maidens, some of whom were
engaged in spinning or carding wool, while others wove and sewed, or
busied themselves about household matters.

"Have patience, my son," said Herfrida. "Thou art not yet strong enough
to go forth to battle. Doubtless, in three or four years--"

"Three or four years!" exclaimed Alric, to whom such a space of time
appeared an age. "Why, there will be no more fighting left to be done
at the end of three or four years. Does not father say that if the King
succeeds in his illegal plans all the independence of the small kings
will be gone for ever, and--and--of course I am old enough to see that
if the small kings are not allowed to do as they please, there will be
no more occasion for war--nothing but a dull time of constant peace!"

Herfrida laughed lightly, while her warlike son strutted up and down the
ancestral hall like a bantam cock, frowning and grunting indignantly, as
he brooded over the dark prospects of peace that threatened his native
land, and thought of his own incapacity, on account of youth, to make
g