Then Liot stood up, and Karen, busy with her knitting, watched him. She saw that he had brown hair and gray eyes and the fearless carriage of one who is at home on the North Sea. His voice at first was frank and full of brave inflections, as he told of the noble, faithful, helpful Gisli, pursued by evil fortune even in his dreams. Gradually its tones became sad as the complaining of the sea, and a brooding melancholy touched every heart as Gisli, doing all he might do to ward off misfortune, found it of no avail. "For what must be must be; there is no help for it," sighed Liot. "So, then, love of wife and friends, and all that good-will dared, could not help Gisli, for the man was doomed even before his birth." Then he paused, and there was a dead silence and an unmistakable sense of expectation; and Liot's face changed, and he looked as Gisli might have looked when he knew that he had come to his last fight for life. Also for a moment his eyes rested on old Snorro, who was no longer crouching over the hearth, but straight up and full of fire and interest; and Snorro answered the look with a nod, that meant something which all approved and understood; after which Liot continued in a voice full of a somber passion: "It was the very last night of the summer, and neither Gisli nor his true wife, Auda, could sleep. Gisli had bad dreams full of fate if he shut his eyes, and he knew that his life-days were nearly over. So they left their house and went to a hiding-place among the crags, and no sooner were they there than they heard the voice of their enemy Eyjolf, and there were fourteen men with him. 'Come on like men,' shouted Gisli, 'for I am not going to fare farther away.'" Then old Snorro raised himself and answered Liot in the very words of Eyjolf: "'Lay down the good arms thou bearest, and give up also Auda, thy wife.'" "'Come and take them like a man, for neither the arms I bear nor the wife I love are fit for any one else!'" cried Liot, in reply. And this challenge and valiant answer, though fully expected, charged the crowded room with enthusiasm. The women let their knitting fall and sat with parted lips and shining eyes, and the men looked at Liot as men look whose hands are on their weapons.