“A chieftain,” he said, “must possess the faculty of seeing into his vassals’ hearts and of knowing their thoughts without question asked and answer given; even without any uttered word. A man who cannot divine the unspoken thoughts of his dependents will not long retain the prestige vital for a Gothi, or for any sort of chieftainship. Necessarily, I know much without being told, with hardly even a glance. Mostly for instance, I can foresee months in advance, sometimes even years in advance, what girl each youth will woo for his wife, what maiden each lad desires, even what lad finds favor in each maiden’s eyes. Such must any chieftain divine.” At Hofstadir Thorkell was soon at home among the buildings. Not less than by the chimney, inset fireplace and lavish wood fire was he impressed by the fortifications of the homestead. It was protected all round with a dry moat, the earth from which, thrown up on the inner side, formed a considerable rampart, topped on all four sides of the enclosure by a solid wall of large, roughly squared blocks of stone. At the corners were jutting, bulging circular bastions well stockaded with birch logs, set deep in the earth, butt up and touching each other, everyone fully three spans broad at the upturned butt, for, in those early days, the primeval woods of Iceland furnished logs much larger than any now obtainable on the island. The stockades, like the walls, were breast-high. Thorkell had never seen a bastion before, nor heard of one, and was much impressed by the novelty, originality and manifest adequacy of the device. The idea of a bastion, that it affords defenders of a fortification an opportunity of shooting sideways at an assailant crossing the fosse or scaling the parapet, appears so obvious to us that we can scarcely realize that there ever was a time when it was unknown. Yet, hundreds, even thousands of years after it was common and a matter of course in the Mediterranean countries, it had not yet penetrated the ruder northern lands. In fact, in all parts of the world, men were not quick to conceive the idea, and, as with other devices, very slow to adopt it from foemen. Almost as much was Thorkell impressed by the bath-house, a small structure, one might say a hut, built of sod and stone, with a low door and only one very tiny window. Inside there was room for only one person and a pail of water beside a very small stone stove. This was heated almost red-hot and then the bather, with a dipper, poured on it water which at once filled the hut with steam, both cleansing and refreshing. On either side of the chimney-piece in the great hall was a sort of trophy of spears, shields and swords arranged in a pattern like a six-pointed star; six short pikes crossed and lashed to pegs, six small round shields set between the radiating spears, and twelve swords, two by each shield. Above the fireplace was another, of six long swords, their points together, their hilts apart, with shields between.