So Thorstein was healed of his sickness; but not until the summer was far spent, and not until he had begun, little by little, to learn words of the fell-folk’s language. For whatever the child did for him or showed him she was not silent about it, but chattered the while, and often said its name loud and plain; and when he said it after her, she laughed and nodded. When she brought him milk she would say “Bainne:” and sometimes when he was thirsty the little roguish creature would wait awhile, as he clacked his tongue and licked his lips, until he would say “Bainne:” and then she laughed and brought the milk-pot. And Thorstein soon learnt with such teaching, and never thought of being shy as children are when they are taught a strange tongue. Nor was it quite strange to him: for his mother had told him a few words of her mother’s language, which was Erse, and not unlike the words of these people, only spoken a little otherwise. So when he one day saw a ring in the child’s treasure-ark, and came out with “Fainne,” and saying “Meur” put it upon her finger, she was astonished, and the rest of them laughed.

Now that he offered no longer to run away, they treated him well after their fashion. He got the cream of the milk, as if he had been a chief’s son at fostering: although the cream was always sour from keeping in foul crocks of rough clay; and indeed they liked it so, as though new cream were tasteless. There was always plenty of flesh meat, of roe-deer and hares and other savoury sorts, good enough, said he to himself, if one doesn’t watch the cooking. As the saw says “What the eye never sees, the heart never grieves after,” so their clarty ways vexed him less and less, as the days wore, and as Greenodd began to be like a dream on the other side of awakening.

Lying in the hut, or sitting out in the sun wrapped in a deer-skin, Thorstein watched the people, and when they were not so new to him they seemed less strange and uncouth. Even when the men came in, whereas at first he crept as far out of the way as he could, at last he was drawn to look on at the game they brought, red-deer and roe-deer, wild boar and hares, all manner of moor-fowl and mere-fowl, and wonderful fish, spotted trout, and silver and golden char, whose pink flesh is the delicatest of all eating. Thorstein had seen some little sport at Greenodd, but it was plain that here the great lake was a teeming fish-pond and the great fells one deer-park, and that these red men were the cunningest of hunters and fishers, if their farming was nought.

Nor were they rough with him now. Once, when a huge youngster began to tease him with some more horse-play, the giant carle who was father and chief of them all, laid open the lout’s head for him. And if once he had thought that they had no manners, and their customs were beastly, now he began to find that they were cunning in their own craft, eloquent in their own tongue, kind to their own kin, and proud of their own havings. It was not always growls and blows: many a time the little wench would play with her ugly father, and cuddle him prettily, and he would pet her as if, said Thorstein to himself, they were no Christian savages, but decent Thor-fearing folk. And if he had looked down upon them as the dirt beneath his feet, he now gathered that they reckoned less of him than he thought for, and kept him at arm’s length while they treated him well, just as a boy treats a squirrel he has caught, stroking it while he holds it hard, for fear it should bite.

So the summer wore and the autumn came, and Thorstein was kept within walls or close at hand. He spent his time with the women for the most part, helping them in their work, but much as he liked. They let him stack wood for fires: sew and fashion such garments as they made from skins, or from cloth that they got by barter for pelts among the Welsh. Sometimes he was let milk the cows and goats, and take them to pasture; but then there was always somebody to watch that he should not run away. Other whiles he tried his hand at woodwork: but it was long before they let him handle a knife, and when they did, sharp eyes were upon him all the time. But they seemed mighty pleased when he turned out little stools and boxes, pegged together with wooden nails, or bits of hooper’s work that would hold water. And as he began to be useful, so he got on famously with them and felt homelike.

The child who had nursed him gave him to understand that her name was Raineach, that is Fern: and indeed she was not unlike the bracken when it is red in autumn, and she was slender and strong and wild as its tall fronds that smother up the hollows among the boulders on the moors. She was maybe a year or so younger than Thorstein, but as tall as he. Gartnaidh mac Tairneach, which is the Son of Thunder, was the name of her father, the giant as we may call him, for he was a head and shoulders taller than even a tall fellow among the Northmen, and far away bigger than the Welsh. Raineach was pleased when she found out Thorstein’s name and what it meant in her talk; for it is as much as to say the Thunder-stone, because Thor is nothing else than the Thunder-god. “And so,” said she, “We are brother and sister, for the Thunder-stone is the Thunder’s child.” And Thorstein by this time was little loath to have it so: and whenever his mind went to Greenodd it took Raineach there too, and he could see her in his dreams in their hall, sharing his trencher and cup, and friendly with Hundi, and tormented by Orm. So he put off the escape that sometimes he planned, until he might persuade her to run with him.

But when at last he had words enough to open out his mind, and to tell her of his longing for home, she was astonished and grieved, and gave him to know that she thought him a very lucky lad to be living in such good company and so well off as he was. For many days she was cool with him and said little: which angered him, so that he would say nothing to her. Once when they were out with the goats together, and she was groping in a blackberry bush, a wild cat sprang straight out at her, like a shot from a sling: and fixed teeth and claws all together in her shoulder. Thorstein had the creature throttled in an instant, but great work it was to get it off, and to kill it, bang as he might with his thick stick. And then he got her home, and the women put herbs on the bite to take the poison out, and to stop the blood. So it was Thorstein’s turn to be nurse for a while, and his sulkiness melted away: all the more that she gave a fine story of his bravery.

Which when the giant heard, he said the little fellow was good enough now to go out with the men. And after that, for many a weary day and through many a terrible night, trotted he behind long-shanks and his lads by moor and mire, chasing the red deer and the roe, and snaring the fowl of wild-wood and water. And one while he got good words for his work; and other whiles, for all he could do, it was nought but ill luck, and an empty belly, and hard blows to his back. But to such doings one hardens when limbs are young, and each time the weariness and the danger are forgotten. Hunger and cold, and rough companionship, and the squalor of the huts became too common to be feared any more. And as the months passed, the boy waxed and throve in the keen air of the fells. He grew cunning to track the slot, keen of eye and deft of hand, like any savage of them all: and Raineach was proud of her foster-brother.