poor a one as thou wouldst have us believe;” and Olaf sat to listen.
Thorgills swept the strings of his harp, and played the notes of a saga he knew she loved. It was a weird poem, full of sad notes, telling of the parting of a maiden from her lover when he goes viking. Her voice rose with the stirring events at sea, the battle on the water, the maiden’s terror watching it from the shore, her prayer that her lover might conquer, and her triumphal notes when the arrow intended for him entered her own heart. Very thrilling was the thanksgiving little Freda sang, her voice vibrating with the suppressed timidity and the emotions of the poem as she told of the maiden’s gratitude that Christ the White had permitted her to suffer and die in her lover’s place.
When Freda finished, there was the silence of an audience deeply moved. Olaf broke forth, “Bravely done! thou daughter of brave Gormo! None but a true sea-king’s daughter could sing it as thou.”
Then the maidens sang other songs, and as he sat to listen, Olaf would smile at pretty Freda, and the Lady Aastrid would feel a great rejoicing over the prospect of success in her favorite plan. Down in the king’s mind, however, was a thought that had she known it would not have pleased the lady. The king’s glance wandered from Freda to Gudrun, and his thought ran thus: “The little one is pretty and maidenly and tender,—all that a man might cherish.
