who was looking at her with wistful eyes. “And thou, little maid,—wilt thou come and fill my lonely heart for a space?”
Thorgills drew his breath quickly as the girl ananswered, “O lady! I will serve thee and love thee and call myself full honored.” The words came in a rush of grateful tenderness.
“So, then, thou art my daughter until—” and the Lady Aastrid turned meaningly to Thorgills, “some Norseman, like a strong viking, shall steal all thy love and thy duty from me.”
The terror flashed into Maidoch’s misty blue eyes. In their dark depths they seemed as the waters of the Salten Fiord, when the brume of December floats over their blue unrest. Thorgills’ face flushed, and he listened eagerly. Maidoch looked beseechingly at the Lady Aastrid. “I will serve thee, dear lady,” she said, “as long as thou wilt bear with me. But if I must stay in this strange land, let it be always at thy side.”
Lady Aastrid looked puzzled, but Maidoch’s voice was of such sweetness, her sad smile so tender, and her whole bearing so full of gentle grace, that the elder woman could not gainsay her. But the Lady Aastrid noted the moody silence of the scald and the eager tone of Fiachtna, as he said: “My little maid hath seen so many sorrows that her thought is ever turned toward her Irish home, as it were a home where sorrow found her not; but, dear lady, we are
