Eric Red, who lived at Brattalithe in Ericsfrith, had been a notable man all his life, and a man of mettle. In Earl Hakon's day in Norway he had been a Viking, had made a few friends and many enemies; then he had gone out to Iceland and founded a family in the west country, which might have endured to this day if it had not been for his headstrong way of doing. But, as before, he made more enemies than friends; and when he killed the son of Thorgest the Old, and was pursued for the slaughter at the Thing, he found that there was more feeling against him than he had reckoned on, and that Iceland could not hold him much longer. By what shifts a ship was hidden for him among the islands, and how his friends got him down by night, and rowed him aboard, and how he slipped his cable and escaped pursuit, cannot be told here. Enough to say that he found his way to Greenland, and chose out a fair haven for himself and his company. When he was settled in, and had his town of Ericshaven marked out, and his house built, he felt himself like a king and cast about for alliances. He sent out messengers to Iceland calling upon all men who had been his friends to rally about him. Many came, and by the time his friend Thorbeorn had decided to join him there was a strong settlement at Ericshaven.

Eric was now grown old, and was very fat. He thought himself that his work was over, but had hopes to see it continued in his sons. He had three sons by his wife Theodhild; the eldest was Leif, who was abroad at this time, supposed to be in Orkney. Leif was a fine tall man who took after his mother, and had none of Eric's fiery colour; the second son was Thorstan, who was as red as a fox; the third was Thorwald, and resembled Leif, but was of slighter build. Then there was a tempestuous daughter, named Freydis, a strongly made, fierce girl, who was fated to do terrible things. She was married to one of Eric's vassals, a man called Thorward of Garth, but treated him with great contempt and did just what she pleased. As for Theodhild, Eric's wife, she was a Christian at this time, and had taken herself out of Brattalithe for religion's sake. She had built a church in Ericshaven and found a priest to serve it; and now she lived in a small house hard by and practised austerities. She was a very stately woman, and held in great estimation all over the settled country. Eric Red was uneasy with her, because he believed that she scorned him; but her sons used to go to see her. She had quarrelled with Freydis irrevocably, and if she met her anywhere would never take any notice.

Thorbeorn was made welcome at Brattalithe and great attention shown to his fair daughter. Women were scarce in Greenland. Eric's two sons, Thorstan and Thorwald, immediately wanted her; but Thorstan was the elder and stronger, and soon came to terms with Thorwald. "My mind," he said, "is set upon Gudrid, and I am older than you by a good deal. I advise you to be my friend in the affair, otherwise no one knows how it may turn out." Thorwald said that that was fair enough: "But I advise you to be sharp about it." "Why so?" said Thorstan. Thorwald told him that he would be only one of many. He named one or two, and Thorstan frowned. Thorstan was a very honest man; he was a good poet and a great man for dreams, but slow and heavy minded. "A man must not be driven in such a matter," he said. "A man should not need it," Thorwald replied. "As you have spoken to me, so do you speak to Gudrid's old iron father. Hammer him smartly; knock sparks out of him. If you do not, some one else will, and I shall have wasted benevolence upon you. If you are not to be the lucky man, why am I to be thrown aside?"

This was in the very early days, before Thorbeorn had taken up lands in the Settlement. He was all that summer the guest of Eric at Brattalithe, and there was a great deal to do. Eric and Thorbeorn rode about the country, talking of this land and that. Gudrid fell into the ways of the house and made herself useful. She was taken to see Theodhild, and became friends with the stern, lonely woman. Theodhild spent much of her time in the little dark church she had had built. Until Gudrid came, she and the priest had had it pretty much to themselves, for the people in the Settlement stood by Eric, their great man. But Gudrid went to church with Theodhild, and renewed her emotions. She seemed to escape from her shadow in there. One little twinkling light before the altar shone to her through the fog and bade her still to hope.

Then there was Freydis. Oddly enough Freydis took to her, though she pretended to despise her. "You are one of those women whom men go mad about—one of the meek, still women who madden men," she said. "But I am one whom men madden rather; for I hate them and detest their ways, and yet cannot get on without them." Gudrid denied her maddening qualities, and denied that she was meek or still. She assured Freydis that she herself could get on very well without marriage. "I used not to think about it at all until I came to this country where, it seems to me, nobody thinks of anything else. The first thing that happened to me was dreadful. It is no wonder if I think about it now."

Freydis wished to hear what dreadful thing it was, and with a little pressing Gudrid told her what Thorberg had prophesied. Freydis stared. "Is that all? You have only to live in Greenland and live to be a hundred and you might have as many husbands. People die here in the winter like tadpoles in a dry summer. Three! Her moderation alarms me."

"But I must be sure of the death of two men!" said poor Gudrid.

"You must be sure of the death of every man in the world," said Freydis. "It may be that you will be glad enough to be sure of it before you have done with them. I am sure that I should be."

That was all the comfort she got out of Freydis; but happily she had a diversion of her thoughts. Biorn Heriolfsson, who had come round the Ness soon after Thorbeorn sailed, now came up to see Eric Red.

He was a brisk, vivacious man, with a good conceit of himself, and had much that was interesting to say of the new countries he had visited. Gudrid was rapt in attention, for every word he said seemed to make Einar visible to her, with his bright eyes, his ear-rings, his soft eager voice and his white teeth. Einar now stood for all sorts of things besides himself to Gudrid. He stood for home; he stood for Halldis and Orme who had loved her well; and he stood for the days when no heavy fate hung between her and the blue sky. He stood to her as to us the song of a lark may stand, when we are shut up within the walls of a town. She would have married him gladly, but for the Fate; but she no longer thought of him as a lover.

Therefore on account of all that he stood for—home, freedom, loving-kindness, hopefulness—she was enthralled by Biorn's talk, and could not hear enough of the new countries which he had seen. Einar's account of what he had done and where been was quite true. A fair wind took him out from Reekness, and he sailed before it until he had lost the land for two days. Two more days it held, then veered to the northward and blew down upon them the dense Greenland fog. He was now helpless, and for a week or more had no knowledge of his course; but he observed that a strong current was bearing him, as he thought, westward. That might be all to the good, he judged, forgetting how far south he had run before the thick weather caught him; anyhow, there was nothing to be done except to keep a sharp look-out for land a-starboard. He passed several icebergs and had a touch-and-go business with some of them, he said.

At last the fog lifted a little, and a light and fitful wind began to blow—from what quarter they had no means of knowing, but it was a chill wind. Biorn guessed it was northerly. He saw the stars before he saw the sun, and got his bearings. Next day it was fair. The sun rose out of the sea. The ship was heading nor'-nor'-west. He hoisted all sail, and made brave work of it. In the course of that day they saw land ahead, a long low line of dark, like a bank of rain-cloud. Biorn ran on, heading straight for it, but he had his doubts from the first, and when they could make out the country better he said to his mate, "That's never Greenland."

Sounding carefully, they came within two miles of the land, and could hear the thunder of the surf, and see it too. The sea was like a hilly country with troughs between the rollers like broad ghylls, Biorn said. He would be a bold man who tried to land there from a boat.

The country looked to be low-lying, with a sandy shore blown into small pointed hills. Behind those, so far as the eye could reach, there was a dense woodland—most of it black, or looking so, but with patches and belts of red and rose-colour; like flames, said Biorn. No mountains, no snow at all, though by now it was winter in Iceland. Biorn said, "I knew very little about it, to be sure, but knew it was not Greenland the White."

Eric asked him why he had not landed. "How should I land in a surf like that? And what was I to do in the country with my Norway merchandise still aboard, and my father God knew where? I knew he was not there—and that was enough for me."

"But, Biorn," said Gudrid, flushed and eager, "that was a new country you had found. How could you pass it by?"

"All very well," said Biorn, "but I'll trouble you to remember that Greenland was a new country to me—and my father in it moreover. And one new country at a time is enough, I suppose."

He went on to say that he coasted those flat wooded shores for the better part of two days and nights, keeping the land on his port bow, but when, as it seemed to him, the coast-line turned westward as if to make a great bay, thinking he would cut across it, he held on his course. It was another two-three days before they made land again, and then it was the same thing as before—woods, swamps, sand, driving rain, or good sunshine; and still no snow. Now he had trouble with his crew, who were for running into the land. They wanted wood and water, they said; but Biorn wouldn't have it. "I wanted my father," he said, "and besides there was abundance of water."

"What you wanted your father for beats me," said Eric, and Gudrid's bright eyes sparkled their approval of his judgment.

"A man may want to see his father more than a foreign country, I suppose," said Biorn. "You forget that I have seen a deal of foreign countries—Russia, Sweden, Dantzick and what-not."

Well, then they sailed for three days and nights before a spanking breeze from the southwest, and ran into the true winter cold, and presently saw land for the third time—snow mountains wreathed with cloud, snow upon the sea-beach itself. Biorn said it was an unchancy, inhospitable kind of country where his father would never choose to live. It was deep water so that they could come close in. There were no signs of habitancy; but there were white bears to be seen, in plenty. That was an island, he said. They held on their course, which was N.E. by E., the breeze stiffened into a gale; and then it came on to blow hard. They had more than enough of it under shortened sail, and shipping green seas every fourth wave. Then, for the fourth time, they sighted land, and a great ness which ran far out into the sea. "Greenland!" said Biorn; and Greenland it was. On the lee side of that ness was the very town about his father's house; and the very first man he saw was his father, with lobster-pots all round him.

That, he said, was how it had been, and anybody was welcome to the news. As for himself, he was a trader, and had no mind for fancy voyages. Eric said that he might take the adventure up himself, but at any rate his son Leif would take it up. Thorwald said that he intended to go if Leif would take him. "I want to see that country where there is no winter. That's the place for me. Will you come too, Thorstan?"

But Thorstan was looking at Gudrid and did not hear him.