ain, ill will it be for you if ye are not ready to fly."

"Now it seems to me," said Dame Astrid, who was of an anxious
temperament, "that thou art too confident, Herfrida. It would be wise
at all events to get ready."

"Does anyone know where Alric is?" asked Ingeborg.

As everyone professed ignorance on this point, his mother said that she
had no doubt he was safe enough; for he was a bold little man, and quite
able to take care of himself.

"If he has had his own way," observed Ivor the Old, who came in at that
moment, "he is in the fleet for he is a true chip of the old tree; but
we are not like to see him again, methinks, for I have seen the fleet
giving back on the right wing, and hasted hither to tell ye."

This report had the effect of shaking Herfrida's confidence to the
extent of inducing her to give up her preparations for the feast, and
assist the others in making arrangements for a hasty flight with such
household valuables as could be easily carried about the person. Some
time after they had begun this work, a young man, who was a cripple, and
therefore a non-combatant, hobbled into the hall, and announced the fact
that Haldor's fleet was routed everywhere, and fleeing. He had seen it
from the cliff behind the stede, and indeed it could partly be seen from
the hall window.

"Now," cried Finn the One-eyed bitterly, "all is lost, and I must carry
out Erling's last instructions. He told me, if the fight went against
us, and the King's men gained the day, I was to lead ye down by the
forest path to the cave behind Ulfstede, where there is a ship big
enough to carry the whole household. If alive, he and his friends are
to meet us there. Come, we must make haste; some of the ships are
already on the beach, and if they be the King's men we shall soon see
them here."

Everyone was now so thoroughly convinced of their desperate case that
without reply each went to complete arrangements as fast as possible.

"Wilt thou go with us?" said Finn to the hermit, when all were assembled
in front of the house at the edge of the forest.

"I will, since God seems to order it so," said the hermit; "but first I
go to my hut for the rolls of the Book. As ye have to pass the bottom
of the cliff on which my dwelling is perched, I will easily overtake
you."

"Let us go with him," said Hilda to Ada. "There is a roll in the hut
which Erling and I have been trying to copy; Christian may not be able
to find it, as I