sailed the high seas, and brought back white furs from the
North, and stories of mountains and ice-floors.

Next, I remember a strange ship come rowing one day up the fjord, and of
her landing, and the men coming up to the hall, where they stayed many
days; and of how they ran in the fields, shouting, and throwing the
grass at each other; for they were sea-weary.

Then they departed, and there passed some more seasons and harvests,
with sometimes hunting of bears or of deer, and the hewing of pieces of
woodland.

Thus the years trod by softly while the Lord Snore grew to his manhood.

And Lord Sigmund would sail away with his men every spring when the
planting was over, and my young lord would sit in his place in the hall,
and, when need was, give justice unto the townsfolk. Good years, O king,
when the fields grew wide, and the board was filled for a hundred men
who sat there every evening.

When, looking back from where I now sit--I hope near the end of my life--I
see again clearly, it is the time of mid-summer in the meadows that
stretch by the side of the fjord, where the woods fall back, an hour's
boat-row from the castle. There, just when the still noonday drew to its
close, and the slanting sun was beginning to throw its afternoon
brightness in our brown faces, my Lord Snore and I lay stretched out in
the long, sweet grass, he with a heavy cross-bow--a new weapon then--and
the carcasses of two brown deer lying beside him, I idly talking and
ever looking forth over the blinding waters for sight of his father's
ship that we might begin to expect now, the grain being tall.

Suddenly, from behind a point of jutting woods round which the fjord ran
curving, grew and took shape a something long that the sun shining on
made painful for the eyes--a long, low something that, curving in again,
glided between me and the dark green point of trees. It was the ship!
The young lord sat up on the grass, and putting his hand on the
carcasses of the deer, rose to his feet. "It moves too slowly," he said.
It was true. Now we could see the swing of the oars, and the pause
between the strokes was very long.

"Look at the dragon," he said again, shading his eyes with his hand. I
saw now that the great beak that had used to be so fierce in its
red-and-gold painting was broken off, so that only its curving neck rose
from the bow. And, looking again, I saw that the sides of the ship were
battered, as if by rocks, and that many of