Once upon an afternoon in summer time it was that our story begins; and so long ago that we may live perhaps to call it a thousand years since. Swein and his people had not been ten winters yet at Greenodd; but they had built a good house, and cleared land to farm it, and made the place look something like home.

So one afternoon before summer was over, Unna sat rocking her baby Thorstein to sleep, and sewing as she stirred the cradle with her foot, and singing as she sewed. She wore a long gown of ruddy colour, long sleeved; with a kerchief round her neck, and a housewife’s apron; but because she was of high birth, she had a gold band like a crown round her head, and her yellow hair was tucked around it and fell away unbraided from under a high white cap. A silken pocket hung from her belt, and on her finger was a gold ring; but her jewels for the most part were locked away in a kist, against high-days and holidays. For this was a working day, and every one was busy.

Most folk were out of doors that time of year; only the mother was at home, minding the baby after her morning’s turn round the farm; and to keep her company, an old nurse who, being a brisk body, was putting in a spell of work at a standing loom of the ancient make. She threw the shuttle slowly, and combed up the web but slackly, for the afternoon was warm, and the sun outside beat upon the roof of the house and made it hot. For the house was like one of our barns with its rafters and beams unceiled: and though it was heavily thatched, the air was hot within. It was somewhat gloomy too, in spite of the bright sheen that lay on field and fell. Though door and porch door stood open, the rest of the place was lit only by windows that stood high up near the roof, in a row on either side of the long hall: and they were filled with bladder, which kept out the sun. One spot there was which had been burst by the stone-throwing of the boys, and not mended yet for want of hands in this busy summer-time. Through the hole a ray of sunlight shot across the hall, and caught on the chain of the hanging lamp, and lit up the thin smoke that rose in the midst. For the hearth fire was never let out if they could help. Even in summer it was needed morning and evening for their cooking, and bad to kindle from fire-stones and rotten sticks. So as wood and peat were plentiful, it was smothered between whiles just to keep it alight, and thus went on from year’s end to year’s end.

The hearth was in the middle of the floor, then-a-days, raised a little and paved with cobbles set in sammel clay. One could sit round it, as you can still at a fire-spot in a farm-house of the right old sort. And grand times they had of winter’s evenings with their great chat fires, or else logs of which one end was out at the door while the other was blazing under the black pot. There folk would sit working and tale-telling, and watching acorns and crab apples roast, and the boiling of their porridge in that same great pot that hung by an iron crook and a chain from the house-beam overhead, the “rannal balk” as our folk, the Northmen’s children, call it still.

Up through the gloom and the little space of sun went the thin blue smoke, like a stripe of rain out of April clouds. Half way to the roof it was met by the chimney flue, that hung down likest of ought to a great bell hanging from the roof tree, narrow at the top and covered like a belfry with a flagstone laid flat upon pillars, but opening out beneath and crossed by the house-beam. And in this luffer or chimney hung the last hams and smoked meat of the year before. For at the back end of the year they always hung their flesh meat against the winter, and Unna was too wise a house-wife to let them eat all up before the next store was laid in, however plentiful the season might be.

You must know this “firehouse” (as we still say) was the main hall and living room of the homestead. Bed-chambers there were alongside of it behind the wall, and out-buildings; not to say lofts among the beams, and an earth-house or cellar dug out under the floor at one end of the hall. But the firehouse was the House, as one may say; and in a homely spot like this backwood bigging at Greenodd a thousand years since, everything went forward in the firehouse; cooking and eating, work and play, business and pleasure. This was their hearth and home.

At one corner were its door and porch opening upon the garth, and at the opposite corner there was another door: and at the back part were out-buildings rising sharply up the hill behind. At the ends of the hall under the gables were great arks and kists against the wall, and at one end the aforesaid loom: but along the side were hung the men’s weapons, spears and shields and coats of mail, and their hunting and fishing tackle, well out of the way in a row beneath the row of windows, and over long benches that lined the hall on either hand.

In the middle of the benches were two high seats, one on this side and one on that over against it. They were like the great elbow-chairs or settles you see in old farm-houses; roomy enough for three, carved on their high backs, and with carved heads to their posts in front. The children had a tale that one head was father and one was mother: older folk would say the figures stood for Odin and Freya. Anyway they were something more than just ornaments; they gave a holiness to the place, and made the high seat of the master as it were a kind of temple-stall.

Before the benches on one side of the hall stood a long table, all of oak, like the seats and the wainscotting and the rest, brown already with age and bright with rubbing: but on the other side the tables had been taken off their trestles and laid up to make more room, and because half their men were abroad with Swein at sea. On this side sat Unna in her own high seat with the cradle at her feet, and before her the hearth with its thin smoke going up, and the sun-ray striking through it, and blazing in the fern that was strewed on the floor. And when the sun-spot crept upon the cradle she stooped down and moved it a little backwards, so that the bright light should not wake the baby. And when he stirred she pushed the cradle with her foot and sang again while she sewed at his shirt. And the loom went clattering on with the steady noise that is good for babies’ slumber. Nothing else was heard, except the birds singing in the green-wood around, and far-away clamour of people working in the fields.

When the baby was sound asleep again, Unna rose, and walked softly to see where his brothers might be: and her gown trained on the ferny floor. She stood in the porch and called, but not too loudly, “Ho! Orm! Hundi! where are you? what are you doing?”

But they were off. And so she sat down again and sewed till her eyelids were heavy with the warmth and the dimness of the place.

“Eh, barn,” she said, “what makes one so drowsy? sleep by day and starve at night, they used to say.”

“Most like a stranger is coming,” said the old woman from the loom.

For it was thought that a man’s fetch went before and brought slumber.

“Few strangers here but bad ones,” said Unna.

“May be it’s the master and the men.”

“Why, they are gone but these three weeks, and who knows when they may come back, and how? And it’s weary waiting, and a deal on one’s hands: let alone the chances of raid and robbery.”

“What, there’s Raud thy brother and all,” said the old woman sharply. “And folk must live. It would be ill liked if the master never brought home an armful of finery, or another hand or so for the farm, or a barrel of somewhat sharper than we can brew.”

“Aye, its a lone spot: not that I complain: for Raud is a handy lad. It will be a bad day when he takes land up-bank, as he talks of doing.”

“Nay, never heed his talk. He must light on some one fit first,” answered the weaver: “and how will he do that hereaway, I’d like to know? As for thy man, and my man, and the rest, they are men, with hands to their elbows and heads on their shoulders.”

“Or had, you may say, to start with,” said Unna with a sigh.

“Heads, aye, and know their ways about. Look at my old man. These forty winters he has come back to me the same as ever.”

“Aye, he has a cat’s life, has old Toli.”

“Not so old as that comes to, neither,” said the crone. “And thankful we should be for our good men and for a good roof over us. Eh, child, when I think on all we have come through.”

“No fells, no dales,” said she: “no loom, no clatter;” but she hastened to add “I am out of sorts to-day. There’s overmuch to be done before they come, to redd all up for the back end. There’s yon window now. I wonder if the ladder is handy. One might do it oneself sooner than bide for those lazy carles.” And she got up and walked uneasily to the door again.

“Nay barn, let it be: its none of thy job,” said the old woman; muttering to her loom, for there was nobody else to hear. “The mistress is queer and fidgetty to-day. One might think somewhat was going to happen.”

But the ladder was up against a rick in the distance, and men were on it, thatching and shouting. Over the water, and all round, wooded hills shook in the heat-haze. Unna shaded her eyes and looked once more for Orm and Hundi, but nought she spied. She came back and sat on a stool against her high-seat, and tried to sew. But the sun-spot crept on to her lap, like some little wounded animal, dragging itself painfully to refuge there. It shone through her work, and through her fingers, so that they seemed blood-red: and it dived into the red stone in her ring, and made it redder than blood: and it burned on the gold like the whole sun itself, a blaze of mystery, a dream of glory.

Clitter-clatter went on the loom. “Poor soul,” said the old woman: “best thing she can do”—as she saw Unna’s tired head sink back against the post of the high-seat, and her long white throat slide out of the white neckerchief, and her chin heaved up, like a blown wild rose leaf, warm in the reflected sunshine.

Then in the stillness the sun-spot dragged itself off her hand and off her lap, and tumbled to the floor again in one roundel, just like a bubble that gathers itself together in the dark pool under a waterfall, out of the shattering of the spray: a dream of death.

Clitter-clatter went on the loom nevertheless: and the birds sang still in the green world outside. The mother’s dreams were soft and sweet, of life’s love, and life’s labour, that never fail nor come to bitterness; for these regard not glory, and fear not death.