Thurida, and her son Kiartan, immediately invited all their kindred and neighbours to a funeral feast. They had brewed for Yule, and now they kept the banquet in commemoration of the dead. When all the company had arrived, and had taken their places--the seats of the dead men being, as customary, left vacant--the hall door was darkened, and the guests beheld Thorodd and his servants enter, dripping with water. All were gratified, for at that time it was considered a token of favourable acceptance with the goddess Ran if the dead men came to the wake; “and,” says the Saga writer, “though we are Christian men, and baptized, we have faith in the same token still.” The spectres walked through the hall without greeting any one, and sat down before the fire. The servants fled in all directions, and the dead men sat silently round the flames till the fire died out, then they left the house as they had entered it. This happened every evening as long as the feast continued, and some deemed that at the conclusion of the festivities the apparition would cease. The wake terminated, and the visitors dispersed. The fire was lighted as usual towards dusk, and in, as before, came Thorodd and his retinue, dripping with water; they sat down before the hearth, and began to wring out their clothes. Next came in the spectres of Thorir Stumpleg and the six who had died in bed after him, and had been buried; they were covered with mould, and they proceeded to shake the mould off their clothes upon Thorodd and his men. The inmates of the house deserted the room, and remained without light and heat in another apartment. Next day the fire was not lighted in the hall but in the other room; the farm-people reckoning upon the ghosts keeping to the hall. But no! in came the spectral train, and upon the living men vacating their seats, the ghosts occupied them, and sat looking grimly into the red fire till it died out, whilst the terrified servants spent the evening in the hall. On the third day two fires were kindled--one in the hall for the ghosts, and another in the small chamber for the living men; and so it had to be done throughout the whole of Yule.