Sigurd himself! Sigurd
the Strong!
ORNULF. But sharper was thy stroke that night thou didst bear away
Dagny, my daughter. (Casts his hood back.)
SIGURD AND HIS MEN. Ornulf of the Fiords!
DAGNY (glad, yet uneasy). My father and my brothers!
SIGURD. Stand thou behind me.
ORNULF. Nay, no need. (Approaching SIGURD.) I knew thy face as
soon as I was ware of thee, and therefore I stirred the strife; I
was fain to prove the fame that tells of thee as the stoutest man
of his hands in Norway. Henceforth let peace be between us.
SIGURD. Best if so it could be.
ORNULF. Here is my hand. Thou art a warrior indeed; stouter strokes
than these has old Ornulf never given or taken.
SIGURD (seizes his outstretched hand). Let them be the last strokes
given and taken between us two; and do thou thyself adjudge the matter
between us. Art thou willing?
ORNULF. That am I, and straightway shall the quarrel be healed.
(To the others.) Be the matter, then, known to all. Five winters
ago came Sigurd and Gunnar Headman as vikings to Iceland; they lay
in harbour close under my homestead. Then Gunnar, by force and craft,
carried away my foster-daughter, Hiordis; but thou, Sigurd, didst take
Dagny, my own child, and sailed with her over the sea. For that thou
art now doomed to pay three hundred pieces of silver, and thereby
shall thy misdeed be atoned.
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