But what about Asdis, all this while? She was never the worse off, whatever happened. She was too wise to spoil her looks with weeping, and too pretty to sit long at Asmundarlea waiting for a new husband. She lighted on her feet, like a cat, wherever she fell: and before many months was purring by another fireside, with the cream of the milk to lap. But as she blinked in the fireglow, she was only watching her mouse.

The land was not so bare of people as it had been twenty winters since. Bit by bit, as the days went on, the dales were cleared and inhabited. From the low country one after another went up to take land among the fells. For the Northmen could never abide close quarters. They hated towns, and loved a free life: a spot to themselves, with elbow-room; a seat on a howe overlooking broad fields and fell-pastures, with the smoke of the next neighbour’s hall rising far away through the green wood. It was one thing to have good friends within hail and call, but another to be thrust among folk in one of those stinking swine-styes, said they, where the Saxons herded. And so their biggings crept up from the shore of Leven and Duddon, and from nook to nook the house-reek rose, like bale-fires lighted to tell the world that this Lakeland was the land-take of the Northmen.

Therefore all the coming and going of Thorstein could not fail to be spied, and the tale sped from mouth to mouth, time and again, and lost little in its travels. In a while it came to dame Asdis, where she sat with black anger in her heart against Thorstein, and against the wild she-wolf of the fells who had stolen him out of her arms. And in all this she blamed herself never one whit, and folk came to look on her as a fair woman with great wrongs to avenge.

In a time of quiet, when ill men are aweary of peace, and stirring men hanker after the adventures of old days, no great work was needed to egg on rough fellows to the job she had on hand. A gang of lads and louts was drawn together, and some silly vow got out of them that they would rid the land of the wood-biders: and all as if it had been some great deed.

Now the island was but very little known to the North-folk at the back of the fells; but one thing they knew, and this was that they could not come at it without boats: and if they stayed boat-building they would be spied and foreset. But said Asdis, “Wait until the apple drops. Why build a boat to cross a bridge?” At which they gaped, but she bade them watch the birds and the bushes.

For that third winter began to be a hard winter. The swallows went early, and the wild swans came in flocks from the north. Choups and holly-berries reddened the hedges; and after Yule the fells were creamed over and the becks dwindled. As the days lengthened so the cold strengthened, until even the sunny shores of Leven and Duddon were frozen fast; and when a high tide came, it burst the floe, and left the sands and mosses strewn for many a mile with huge blocks and tables of ice, piled one upon another like peats to dry. Then Asdis rubbed her hands and said, “Now, lads, your bridge will be built.”

So they set out and away through the snowy woods until they came to the waterside of Thurston-mere; and there was a sight. Still as death the white fells stood around. Still as death the lake spread, white and black; white where the snow hid it, and black in great reaches that could hardly be known from standing water, but that its soft ripples stirred not, and the picture of wood and fell lay upon them clearer and quieter than the shapes in a tarn on a summer day, for all the north-wind’s blowing. The only thing that moved was a wreath of smoke on the fellside over against them, and the likeness of the same wreath in the glassy field below. And where the two wreaths met was a crag, standing up from the flat; an island no longer.

They adventured from the snowy shore, hardly knowing when they were on land and when on lake, until suddenly, beneath their feet, deep down, they saw the stones lying at the bottom, clear in the sunlight, through the wonderful floor, such as the floor of Heaven may be to them that walk upon it, and look down upon us thence. Slowly now and warily the men went, for the ice was smooth and slape; and if it was roughened at all, it was not with waves, but as if stars and arrowheads of crystal had been inlaid in glass, like the silver a smith inlays in steel.

Then as they walked there arose a strange turmoil in the stillness. Far and wide the ice began to crack and settle, with groanings and thunderings that roared and muttered from shore to shore. Across the black, clear deep there flew white, ragged lightnings, on either hand, before and behind, as when one watches a thunderstorm in the valley beneath a lofty mountain. Then a great crack flitted screaming right under their feet, and half the company turned and scattered, crying out there was witch-work in it, and they were lost. But as they staggered and slid and fell others cursed them for fools, and kicked them up again, and egged them on; showing them how to set feet together and shove themselves along with their spears thrust hard behind them upon the ice. And so they won a mile or so to the island.

But before they were half way over, the smoke shot up into a thick cloud, and flames flickered; and over the waste of white and black, above the moaning and groaning of the ice field, arose the deep note of a horn, stifled and quivering at first, and strengthening into a hollow peal, that suddenly stayed. As suddenly it was answered from the fell; and then again from the Beacon hill behind; and then again far down the valley; and then again far up the lake; until the sky was ringing with it. They stood in amaze to listen; and the flame blazed higher, and the smoke rolled in coils, brown against the white moorland. Again the war-horn pealed, and the answers came; and when the last had died away, another answer, over and above the echoes, a faint clang, far down the Crake. And then there was only the groaning of the ice to hear; and the island, when they came to it, was nothing but a snowy rock, untenanted, for aught they could see, and lifeless, but for the great fire.

All round the brink the slape ice shelved away, by the settling of the lake, so that footing was bad to get. The rock went down sheer into the smooth floor, grey and bare beneath and heaped with pillowy snow above, from which hung fringes of icicles, like teeth of a dragon in northern deeps. They scrambled up the shelving slide, and grasped at the rocks to break away the icicles and beat down the snow, for hand-hold and foot-hold. But as they strove up the lower rocks, half smothered with the mealy drift, two heads came out upon the top of the crag, and two great stones rolled among them. And those they fell upon cried but once.

Then began a storm of stones from above, to which they could make no reply, for the defenders were hidden behind the highest ridge, and safe from shot. Even if the attackers could make a shift to use bow and dart, and that they could seldom in their eagerness to win upward, and in their unsteady footing, their weapons only rattled down among them again from the icebound rock. And so this went on for a while, until many had been maimed, and some killed outright. The nearer they got, the steeper and more dangerous were the battlements of that castle built without hands: a long wall, high enough and steep enough to be difficult any day, but hopeless in this snow and frost, with the great stones plunging down, well aimed from above.

They drew off to the open and held council. In a while they broke into two bands, and went round the island to try for scaling spots, and to break in on both hands at once. Now the ends of the island are less brant than its sides, for there is a way up between the ridges, both to north and south. But nobody who meant to hold the place would fail to stop those doors with some stockading at least, if not a good stone wall: and so they were brought to a standstill here as heretofore. The north end was not only well blocked, but the rocks there are stiff and steep for this work; and of the two defenders one followed each company round about, never leaving them alone, what with stones, what with hand-strokes when they tried the wooden palings. And if fire was hot within the hold, it was all frost without, and never a spark to set the doors alight.

So now they met together at the south end, where the twin harbour lies between the calf and the crag. They began to swarm up a buttress that makes a narrow ladder to the top, easy enough to climb if it were not for the ice that sheeted it, and for the rough welcome that awaited the first man on the sharp and perilous crest. By this the far-away fells stood rosy red and dim around; the sky was like fire behind Beacon fell, and the cold floor of ice seemed to be all one lake of blood. The bale on the crag reeked and roared, and out of the smoke came a sword that lopped the first comer like a bough, and sent him rolling down the unbroken rock for many an ell. Then they were aware of the wood-biders standing over them, each with a weapon. They took heart and shuffled up the harder, shouting curses, and what they would do when they won to the top. But the next comer rolled into the bay with his brains knocked out. That was the doing of a big stick that swung round and about in the hands of Raineach.

“Well done, lass,” shouted Thorstein, who kept his distance from her, however. “It’s not for nothing she’s a giant’s daughter,” he laughed, for he was warming to the work.

But then the children waked behind them, stirred by the noise; and they screamed. Raineach was scared lest some of the rascals had got in the back way, and she flew to seek them. The carles below set up a jeer, and three or four flung in at once. One was down, and another was down; but Thorstein’s sword bent; and as he kneeled on it to straighten it, the others were at him. They had him on his back, and a stroke would have done their job; but out came Raineach with such a swingeing batt of her club on the one of them, as broke his backbone like a rotten stick; and she gripped the other by the throat and hauled him off. She lugged and tugged, and fairly lifted him off his feet, and bundled him over the edge among his fellows. Up springs Thorstein with a great shout, and she beside him; and every mother’s son that could stir a limb scattered off the edge in a flock. The weight of them all coming down together broke the ice where it was rotten from the warmth of the flat rock, that caught and kept the morning sun; and they went into the hole like corn into the miller’s hopper. It was deep there: the rock goes down at once into the lake, and rises again in ugly teeth, bound to cut a swimmer’s knees, let alone the edges of the broken ice. He with the lopped arm, their leader in the assault, after a few wild strokes went down in a red spot. The rest struggled out, to the nearest shore, and shouted themselves hoarse with their anger.

Thorstein and Raineach went up to look at the man whose back was broken. He cried for water, and she gave him to drink. Thorstein stood over him, fierce and stern.

“Who sent thee, man?” he said.

But they got nothing out of him, and in a while he died.

And then, when all was over, Raineach burst into a blurt of weeping. “What, lass! what, lass!” said Thorstein, as she shook and sobbed in his arms; “hold up, my little one; all’s right now. I warrant we see no more of them. There’s not a scratch on thee, and I am none the worse but for a bruise or two. What’s there to greet for?”

“It’s not that,” she sobbed.

“Here, then; take the barn: hark how he is crying on his mother.” Then as the sobs shook her, and the baby at her breast, said Thorstein, staring at them, and biting a twig, “Eh, queer things women are. Aye, and,” says he, “there’s women and women.”

And so Asdis goes out of the story.

When the stars were shining, they had more guests, not unbidden, though late to the play.

“Kinsman,” said Hundi, as he panted and caught his breath, between draughts of milk in the cot on the island; “Kinsman, no more of this. To the Althing thou goest this mid-summer, if I drag thee yonder by the scruff of the neck.” And “Aye, goes he,” said the half score of men that had come hot-foot from Lowick.

“Never saw I woman more scared than Halldora when thy horn sounded.”

“Scared was she,” said one of them: “but for a scare, oh boys, the master capped all. Snail? says I, as I peltered after him. Hare! says I,—Hundi Harefoot’s the word!”

Hundi caught him by the hand, laughing. “A forfeit,” he cried, “to fasten the name! But Thorstein, my man, get thy peace, and let us share it. Life is not worth living, with this horn-blowing to look for.”

So when mid-summer was come, Thorstein set forth alone, sorely as Raineach grudged his leaving her. She said it was for no good he was going. But he kissed her, and said she should be mistress of Blawith before the summer was out. “That may be,” she said, “but never so happy as here.”