She marked how glad he was, when she flung her arms about his neck and clung to him. “I have been fearing you would be angry with me,” he said. “You must not grieve for our sin,” he said sometime after. “’Tis not a deadly sin. God’s law is not like to the law of the land in this—Gunnulv, my brother, once made this matter plain to me—if two vow to have and hold each other fast for all time, and thereafter lie together, then they are wedded before God and may not break their troths without great sin. I can give you the words in Latin when they come to my mind—I knew them once....” Kristin wondered a little why Erlend’s brother should have said this—but she thrust from her the hateful fear that it might have been said of Erlend and another—and sought to find comfort in his words. They sat together on the chest, he with his arm about her, and now Kristin felt that ’twas well with her once more and she was safe—beside him was the only spot now where she could feel safe and sheltered. At times Erlend spoke much and cheerfully—then he would be silent for long while he sat caressing her. Without knowing it Kristin gathered up out of all he said each little thing that could make him fairer and dearer to her, and lessen his blame in all she knew of him that was not good. Erlend’s father, Sir Nikulaus, had been so old before he had children, he had not patience enough nor strength enough left to rear them up himself; both the sons had grown up in the house of Sir Baard Petersön at Hestnæs. Erlend had no sisters and no brother save Gunnulv; he was one year younger and was a priest at Christ’s Church in Nidaros. “He is dearest to me of all mankind save only you.” Kristin asked if Gunnulv were like him, but Erlend laughed and said they were much unlike both in mind and body. Now Gunnulv was in foreign lands studying—he had been away these three years, but had sent letters home twice, the last a year ago, when he thought to go from St. Geneviève’s in Paris and make his way to Rome. “He will be glad, Gunnulv, when he comes home and finds me wed,” said Erlend. Then he spoke of the great heritage he had had from his father and mother—Kristin saw he scarce knew himself how things stood with him now. She knew somewhat of her father’s dealings in land—Erlend had dealt in his the other way about, sold and scattered and wasted and pawned, worst of all in the last years when he had been striving to free him of his paramour, thinking that, this done, his sinful life might in time be forgotten and his kin stand by him once more; he had thought he might some day come to be Warden of half the Orkdöla county, as his father had been before him. “But now do I scarce know what the end will be,” said he. “Maybe I shall sit at last on a mountain croft like Björn Gunnarsön, and bear out the dung on my back as did the thralls of old, because I have no horse.”