ince of Gauldale, lived in a pretty stone cottage that stood upon the sloping hillside. Around it spread the flowering orchards and well-tilled fields. In the near meadow, sleek kine roamed over the tender grass, soft and green in the springtime verdure. Within the cottage, surrounded by her maidens, Aasa sat day after day at her spinning-wheel. On no other head in Norway grew such skeins of golden hair, on no other cheek glowed such a bloom of roses, and in no other eyes were such depths of starry azure light, as one could see when he beheld the wife of Brynjulf. Beautiful as she was, Aasa was even more highly honored among the peasants of the valley for her loyalty to her husband and her devotion to her home and children.
On this fateful spring day, while Aasa sat spinning, she would drown the whir of her wheel now and then with some Norse saga, and her maidens would join their voices with hers. Out on the green sward at the side of the cottage, Brynjulf was teaching his two sturdy young sons to aim and speed their arrows. At Aasa’s feet sat a tiny golden-haired maiden of four winsome summers. And into this peaceful Eden, as a serpent to sting to death its innocent happiness, came the message of Earl Haakon. Kark and the terrible thralls stood before Brynjulf.
“Who art thou, and what is thy errand?” the peasant asked, noting the ill-favored stranger.
Kark had already observed that none but the
