Since I had been a boy it had been such passages as the one above that had moved me most strangely. There was a man, perhaps one of Fredis’ men, who had seen a part of what had happened on that dreadful morning in the far western world and had sensed the rest. For such a one there would perhaps have been no thought of interference. One can think of him, the unknown writer of the memorable passage above, as even helping in the dreadful slaying there in the field at the edge of the wood and near the sea, not because he wanted to but because he would have been afraid. He would have done that and later perhaps have gone off alone into the woods and cried a little and prayed a little, as I can imagine myself doing after such an affair. The woman Fredis, after she had got what she wanted, swore all her men to secrecy. “I will devise the means of your death if there is any word of this when we have returned to Greenland,” she said, and after she had gone home with the two vessels loaded and had made up her own lie to tell her brother Eric of what had happened to the brothers and their men in the far place, she made all of her own men handsome presents. But there was that scribbler. He would put it down. Fear might have made him take part in the murder but no fear could now keep his hand from the pen. Do I not know the wretch? Have I not got his own blood in me? He would have walked about for days, re-living all of that dreadful morning scene in Vinland and then when he was one day walking he would have thought of something. Well, he would have thought suddenly of just that bit about Fredis crawling back into her husband’s bed, after the talk with Finnbogi, and how her cold wet feet awoke the man. He would have been alone in the wood, back there in Greenland, when that bit came to him, but at once he hurried to his own house. Perhaps his wife was getting dinner and wanted him to go to the store but he would have brushed her aside, and sitting down with ink and paper--perhaps in her angry presence--he wrote all out, just as it is put down above. Not only did he write, but he read his piece to others. “You will get yourself into trouble,” said his wife, and he knew what she said was true but that could not stop him. Do I not know the soul of him? He would have gone about boasting a little, strutting a little. “I say now, Leif, that bit, where Fredis gets into the bed and with her cold feet awakens Thorvard--not bad, eh? I rather nailed her there, now didn’t I old man?” “But you yourself helped to do the murder, you know.” “Oh, the deuce now! Never mind that. But I say now, you’ll have to admit it, I did rather put a spike into my scene. I nailed it down, now didn’t I, Leify old chap?” NOTE VI