ar Thick-Skull came through the doorway and began

h the door, that the whole sky is like that; but you should see the clouds ahead of us! The only thing equally black is the Weathercock's face s

held out his bound hands. "Here are

over his shoulder. "Why-

manded. "With a troll's strength in the

ss must have betrayed him. Scratching his tow mane and staring as he scratched, Hjalm

you easily have mistaken him. You can tell him so when he makes a fuss,-it is not likely that he will no

the thongs. "Behold what a good thing it is to have a reputation for dulness!"

f relief. "Only let me get at it!" he breathed, a

red clouds. Swollen with rain, they hung low over the shore-line of forest and dune and darkened all the distant water save where, here and there, streaks of white gleam

ashore in the same place, and likewise with a broken keel," Alrek commented after a look at the sky; then

lay across the harbor mouth like a screen in front of a door, the helmsman gave out word that since they were plainly storm-bound for the night, at least, they would not deny themselves the c

at jolted," he whispered; "and he can not leave you b

d as though it were a toast, and threw hi

e day was a battle-a fight over the tent canvas which the wind threatened to pick up and carry off like a kerchief with all of them hanging to it in a fringe; a skirmish for fuel through forests into which sand from the dunes beyond was rushing like yellow swarms with

tore apart the darkness and disclosed the deserted ship reeling in terror upon the twisting black water, they only laughed

ing in the tree tops. The leader, with his mind reaching out toward Vinland fires and Vinland

ocks like fiery banners. "Let us take it before anything gets it away from

he twenty was more than a pace in the rear. Once on the crest, they streamed, whooping, into the grove of oak a

d red without losing a leaf. But it was no such forest as Vinland boasted; compared with Vinland trees the growth was stunted and there was not enough underbrush to give it even the wildness of a thicket,-only tangles of rose briar and berry bramble wh

. When it was suggested that they should stop a

hiding?" he said obstinately. "Let u

e. "That can not be far away now; the sand wa

t the trees on either side of him. "Do as you like," he answere

others had caught the fever of his mood so t

et, and the bushes were strangling in sand. In the next there were no bushes at all, only mats and tufts of wiry grass. On the slopes the trees became few

em. "In twenty years more it is likely the whole forest will be covered and the man who comes then will say that we l

ession of them, that they consented without argument; plodding on doggedly over the dunes that had become

s they had seen, whose lair they were now approaching. They stopped in a hushed group when the last dune revealed the beach sweep

down to the Cape point. Southward, lay the land over which they had come; beyond it, the bay in whi

r is something

had flung up there out of their way. So large did it loom in the strange light that, as they went

or motion was o

object-instead of growing larger-dwindled suddenly from whale size and boat size to the size of a human body. Involu

ressed forward. "That is no ani

t-and remained bent as though petrified with astonishment. When the others h

Hunts

gled in his hair. As he had lain upon the rock that winter day, so he lay here upon the sand,-flat on his back with

wn the shore. Never was scene more yawningly empty; between the sweep