In Norway under King Olaf Trygvasson affairs were prospering all this while. The king had settled his kingdom into his own ways, and being of a restless and acquisitive mind, he was already thinking how he could better himself. He had thought more than once of Iceland as a heathen country stocked with fine people well worth the pains of conversion. "To drive them to the water may cost me five hundred lives," he said, "but you may take that as a sowing of which the harvest will be a thousandfold. Christ will win souls and I a new realm." The more he thought of it the more he desired to do it.

Then there came strange news out of Sweden, of painful interest to King Olaf. He heard of mighty stirrings of the pagan people out there, of miracles wrought by their chief god Frey which overpassed any which his own priests could do. What struck him most in these accounts was that the manner of devotion had been changed. Frey, he was assured, was milder-mannered, and would have nothing to do with human sacrifice. More than that, blood-offerings of all sorts were utterly done away with. The king could not understand it, and talked it over with the lords of his council.

"It looks to me," he said, "as if Frey was half-way to be a Christian. Not only will he have no bloodshed, but all his works are those of mercy. He heals the sick, comforts the fatherless, gives sight to the blind, sets captives free! There is something in all this which I cannot fathom. But let me tell you that baptism of a heathen god would be a thing to root the true faith in the rock, as it should be. Then it would stand fast for ever."

Some said one thing, and some another. But Sigurd Helming looked down at his finger-nails with his brows drawn up very high, and said nothing at all.

He was so pointedly silent that the king observed it. "Well," he asked him, "and what are you thinking to see in your finger-nails?"

Sigurd held up the forefinger of one hand. "There is a white fleck in this one," he said, "which warns me of a stranger in Sweden."

"Well," said King Olaf, "and that is true to report. What next?"

"Sir," said Sigurd, "a stranger to my knowledge went into Sweden a year ago, and has not been heard of as coming out again. That was my brother Gunnar, who went for a good reason."

The king frowned. "You did no service to this country when you warned him of my anger."

"Sir," Sigurd said, "I know that. But I was very sure then that he had no part in Halward's slaughter, and I believe that you had an inkling of how the case stood. Otherwise you had not kept me on your council, but had expelled me the realm."

"Well," said the king, "what I have heard since has softened my resentment; but I know nothing. What makes you see the mind of Gunnar in these heathen doings?"

"The knowledge I have of his mind," said Sigurd. "He is a merry man and a mild-mannered man until he is vexed. Now, he never would sacrifice beasts to the gods in the old days when the gods required it. And he always said that it was better to kill a man outright than to keep him in chains or darkness. These are two reasons. Lastly, if it is true that Frey had a woman for his wife, I believe that Gunnar has her now, and that the next miracle of Frey's we hear about will be that she is to give him a child."

The king took hold of his chin under his beard, and considered. Then he said, "Sigurd, do you go into Sweden and witness some of the doings of Frey. If you are right in what you suspect—and I think that you are—you will see Gunnar, and maybe he will tell you the truth of the matter. It is an old story by now, but I don't say that I shall not have a word with the slayer of Halward hereafter if I happen to meet with him." Sigurd said that he would gladly go to Sweden. It was settled that he should set out in the summer when the passes were open and Frey at home again.

SIGURD IN SWEDEN. THE BATTLE OF THE FORD