The mother moaned low:
“None of my children have I loved like this little one—if she too be taken from me, full sure I am my heart will break.”
“God help you, Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter,” said Sira Eirik, and shook his head. “In all your praying and fasting, you have thought only to force your will upon God. Can you wonder that it has helped but little?”
Ragnfrid looked defiantly at the priest, and spoke:
“I have sent for the Lady Aashild even now.”
“Aye, you know her; I know her not,” replied the priest.
“I cannot live without Ulvhild,” said Ragnfrid as before. “If so be God will not help her, I will seek counsel of Lady Aashild, or e’en give myself to the devil if he will help!”
The priest looked as though he would answer sharply, but checked himself again. He bent and felt the limbs of the little sick girl once more:
“Her hands and feet are cold,” he said. “We must lay jars of hot water about her—and then you must touch her no more till Lady Aashild comes.”
Kristin let herself sink back noiselessly on the bench and lay as if asleep. Her heart beat hard with fear—she had understood but little of the talk between Sira Eirik and her mother, but it had frightened her terribly, and the child knew well that it had not been for her ears.
Her mother rose up to go for the hot water jars; and suddenly she burst out sobbing: “But yet pray for us, Sira Eirik.”
Soon after she came back with Tordis. Then the priest and the women busied themselves with Ulvhild, and soon Kristin was found and sent away.
The light dazzled the child as she stood without in the courtyard. She had thought that most of the day must have gone by while she sat in the dark winter-room, and yet the houses stood there light-grey, and the grass was shining like silk in the white midday sunshine. The river gleamed behind the dun and golden trellis-work of the alder-brakes—it filled the air with its gladsome rushing sound, for here by Jörundgaard it ran swiftly over a flat bed strewn with boulders. The mountain-walls rose into the thin blue haze, and the becks sprang down their sides through the melting snows. The sweet, strong springtide out of doors brought tears to her eyes, for sorrow at the helplessness she felt all about her.
There was no one in the courtyard, but she heard voices in the housecarls’ cottage. Fresh earth had been strewn over the spot where her father had killed the bull. She knew not what to do with herself—so she crept behind the wall of the new house—two log-courses had already been laid. Inside lay Ulvhild’s playthings and her own; she put them all together and laid them in a hole between the lowest log and the foundation wall. Of late Ulvhild had wanted all her toys; this had vexed her sometimes. Now she thought, if her sister got well, she would give her all she had. And this thought comforted her a little.
She thought of the monk in Hamar—he was sure that miracles could happen for everyone. But Sira Eirik was not so sure about it, nor her parents either—and she was used to think as they did. A heavy weight fell upon her as it came to her for the first time that folk could think so unlike about so many things—not only bad, ungodly men and good men, but such men as Brother Edvin and Sira Eirik—even her mother and her father: she felt all at once that they too thought not alike about many things—
Tordis found her there in the corner, asleep, late in the day, and took her to her own house; the child had eaten nothing since the morning. Tordis watched with Ragnfrid over Ulvhild through the night, and Kristin lay in Tordis’ bed with Jon, Tordis’ husband, and Eivind and Orm, their little boys. The smell of their bodies, the man’s snoring and the children’s even breathing made Kristin weep silently. It was no longer ago than last evening that she had lain down, as each night of her life before, by her own father and mother and little Ulvhild—it was as though a nest had been riven asunder and scattered and she herself lay cast out from the shelter of the wings which had always kept her warm. At last she cried herself to sleep, alone and unhappy among these strange folk.
Next morning as soon as she was up, she heard that her mother’s brother and all his party had left the place—in anger; Trond had called his sister a foolish, crazy woman, and his brother-in-law a soft simpleton who had never known how to rule his wife. Kristin grew hot with wrath, but she was ashamed too—she understood well enough that a most unseemly thing had befallen in that her mother had driven her nearest kin from the house. And for the first time she dimly felt that there was something about her mother that was not as it should be—that she was not the same as other women.
While she stood brooding on this, a serving-maid came and said she was to go up to the loft-room to her father.
But when she was come into the room Kristin forgot to look at him, for right opposite the open door, with the light full upon her face, sat a little woman who she guessed must be the witch-wife. And yet Kristin had never thought that she would look like this.
She seemed small as a child and slightly made, as she sat in the great high-backed armchair which had been brought up thither. A table had been set before her too, covered with Ragnfrid’s finest, fringed, linen tablecloth. Bacon and fowl were set out upon the silver platter; there was wine in a mazer bowl, and she had Lavrans’ own silver goblet to drink from. She had finished eating and was
