free."

Grettir said, "Nay, thou art scarce deft enow to learn what I have to
teach thee, so needs must I give thee somewhat to remember it by."

Therewith he pulls the shirt up over his head and let the twigs go all
down his back, and along both sides of him, and Gisli strove all he
might to wriggle away from him; but Grettir flogged him through and
through, and then let him go; and Gisli thought he would learn no
more of Grettir and have such another flogging withal; nor did he ever
again earn the like skin-rubbing.

But when he got his legs under him again, he ran off unto a great
pool in the river, and swam it, and came by night to a farm called
Horseholt, and utterly foredone he was by then. There he lay a week
with his body all swollen, and then fared to his abode.

Grettir turned back, and took up the things Gisli had cast down, and
brought them to his place, nor from that time forth gat Gisli aught
thereof.

Many men thought Gisli had his due herein for the noise and swagger
he had made about himself; and Grettir sang this about their dealings
together--

"In fighting ring where steed meets steed,
The sluggish brute of mongrel breed,
Certes will shrink back nothing less
Before the stallion's dauntlessness,
Than Gisli before me to-day;
As, casting shame and clothes away,
And sweating o'er the marsh with fear,
He helped the wind from mouth and rear."

The next spring Gisli got ready to go to his ship, and bade men above
all things beware of carrying aught of his goods south along the
mountain, and said that the very fiend dwelt there.

Gisli rode south along the sea all the way to his ship, and never met
Grettir again; and now he is out of the story.

But things grew worse between Thord Kolbeinson and Grettir, and Thord
set on foot many a plot to get Grettir driven away or slain.

CHAP. LX.

<i>Of the Fight at Hitriver</i>.

When Grettir had been two winters at Fairwoodfell, and the third was
now come, he fared south to the Marshes, to the farm called Brook-bow,
and had thence six wethers against the will of him who owned them.
Then he went to Acres and took away two neat for slaughtering, and
many sheep, and then went up south of Hitriver.

But when the bonders were ware of his ways, they sent word to Thord at
Hitness, and bade him take in hand the slaying of Grettir; but he hung
back, yet for the prayers of men got his son Arnor, who was afterwards
called Earls' Skald,