Terrible was the tale brought to Hougun about the storm of the Lawburg and the death of Thorstein and his fellows. Though indeed not all of them perished. Hopeless as it seemed, some of that band had cut their way through the Saxon army and escaped into hiding among the rocks and woods on Brackmere bank: and some that had been left for dead had been found by their friends when the storm was over, and taken up and healed of their wounds. But not Thorstein. He lay where he fell, within a step of the spot where he had slain his brother. They gave him his peace, late as it was: for it was not too late to let his children inherit the land he had taken around Thurston water.

Hundi and Raud, Mani and the rest of their kinsmen and neighbours came together and rebuilt the homestead at Blawith, freely giving their labour as the custom was; and over and above their labour, each comer gave a share toward the things that were needed to keep house and farm. So that with what she had and what she got, Raineach lacked neither servants nor stock, furniture within nor gear without.

They brought her from the island, and bade her dwell in peace on the land that was hers and her children’s. Many a time came to her one and another who would gladly have cast in his lot with them for her sake: but she said nay to all. After a while she sent for a priest, and built him a church at Blawith, that she might bring up her household in the right faith and fear of God. And before Yule she was the mother of a third son to Thorstein, whom she called Gartnaidh after her father, for he was red-haired and long limbed.

“Thorstein of the Mere will not want for sons to avenge him,” said folk, when they came to see her.

“Nay,” she said. “He has found his peace. Let us keep it.”

But a twelvemonth had not gone by after the battle, and mid-summer was not yet come, when they heard tidings of the death of Eadmund in his own hall at a feast, by the hands of an outlaw. The North-folk looked at one another, as much as to say it was but his due; vengeance had come upon him already for the strife he had stirred up, and especially for the sackless and innocent men who had fallen with Thorstein Sweinson in the war upon Cumberland.

But the Northmen continued in their homes by firth and fell, spite of York earls and Scottish kings. For yet a hundred years and more they kept their freedom. Their own laws they made at their Althing, now in one spot, now in another: shifted westward, maybe, to Little Langdale after Thored’s ravaging of Westmorland, and southward after Ethelred’s harrying of Cumberland. Even when the Normans had brought all this border country under the feudal yoke, still for many a hundred years the dalesmen, children of the vikings, used to meet at the Steading-stone by Thirlmere wath, and kept alive some smouldering memory of their birthright in the country Penalties of Wythburn. And everywhere they still have their old manners and their old speech, changing little of either, and that but slowly.

The Blawith house endured. Its children lived long in the land. When they increased so that Blawith was too small for them, across the Crake they built a strong place, and called it the New Burg, and the ground that it stood in, Newburthwaite. Neighbours by-named them the Redheads of Nibthwaite; maybe because they took after their kinsmen of the fells. There they dwelt, a great family, for many a generation, and thereabouts they dwell even to this day. For in these dales the dream of Unna came true, that saw love abiding and labour continuing, heedless of glory and fearless of death.

SO ENDS THE STORY OF THORSTEIN.