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By Root 1961 0

much longer than usual, walking back and forth along the side of the hill and talking of many things. Skuli told Margret of two or three men of the court, who had fallen deeply in love with ladies who were married to other men, and one of these men was the brother of the king of Sweden. By subterfuge, the knight and his lady saw one another two or three times during the year, and the rest of the time the lady stayed with her husband and children and the knight governed his estates, and it was said by all that the good sense with which he did all of his works was the direct result of the love that he felt for the lady, and the way in which that love showed him the proper love of God, so that he was never cruel toward his tenants, and was always hospitable and openhanded to strangers and visitors. And she, too, was without anger or pride or envy or sloth, and was considered an excellent wife and loving mother, and this love between the two lasted many years, until the lady’s children were grown and her hair was gray. But when, at last, the Great Death came upon the world, and the lady was lying ill and ready to repent of all her sins, the only sin she could not repent freely of was her love for the king’s brother, and so she held this in her heart, and died unshriven of that sin, and her maids feared for her soul, until not long after her death, when her corpus lay on its bier and the maids were washing it, there arose from it a great fragrance, as of the purest flowers in spring, so that it filled the lady’s steading with a pleasing odor, and this fragrance continued in the lady’s chamber for many years after she was buried, and was seen as a sign of her virtue. And no one who was about her during her last days died of the contagion, for the fragrance served to repel bad airs from the steading.

There was another story, said Skuli, of a poor man who went on a crusade against the Turks, and he, too, was much in love with the wife of a fellow knight, who stayed home. And this man was made very bold in his crusade, so that he slew great numbers of the infidel, and was rewarded with many lands back in Denmark, where his concubine lived, but his love for the lady moved him to give away these prizes to the Church, and keep for himself only his horse and a sufficiency of plunder so that he could provide for his manservant and himself. It so happened that after twenty years of fighting, he was grievously wounded and near to death when his servant carried him from the field, but he grieved more over the knowledge that he had nothing to send back to his lady as a reminder of himself and a keepsake except a fragment of a green banner that he had won in the day’s battle. This the servant vowed to take to the lady, and he did so, traveling for five more years. But when he had made his return, he discovered that the lady was dead, and when he found her tomb near the church, he saw that she had died on the selfsame day as the knight had died, and that hanging from her tomb was an unfaded sleeve of the same color of green as the banner, and the fragment of the banner fit into the sleeve as if they had been cut from the same cloth. Margret could not hear enough of such stories, and when Skuli came to the end of the ones he knew, she begged him to repeat them, which he gladly did. When she returned to Gunnars Stead, the evening meal was finished, and all the Gunnars Stead folk were asleep. Margret was not a little pleased with this great piece of luck.

Now Skuli persuaded Kollbein Sigurdsson to allow him to lodge at Undir Hofdi church, in order to help the old priest, Nikolaus, with the summer work. Kollbein was not a little reluctant to do this, since he had great plans of his own for Skuli’s time, but Skuli pointed out to him that Nikolaus’ steading was within easy visiting distance of all the farms in Vatna Hverfi, and it would be convenient from there to judge the wealth of the district. Kollbein declared that indeed this was so, and allowed Skuli’s departure. Even so, Skuli put off the move for a few days, and seemed to himself almost