* * * * * Kristin made ready her parents’ bed for the guest, and Lady Aashild asked that the girl should sleep with her. After they had lain down and the house was silent, Lady Aashild brought forth her errand. She grew strangely heavy at heart as she saw that this child seemed to think not at all on the sorrow she would bring on her father and mother. Yet _I_ lived with Baard for more than twenty years in sorrow and torment, she thought. Well, maybe ’tis so with all of us. It seemed Kristin had not even seen how Ulvhild had fallen away this autumn—’tis little like, thought Aashild, that she will see her little sister any more. But she said naught of this—the longer Kristin could hold to this mood of wild and reckless gladness, the better would it be, no doubt. Kristin rose up in the dark, and gathered together her ornaments in a little box which she took with her into the bed. Then Lady Aashild could not keep herself from saying: “Yet methinks, Kristin, the best way of all would be that Erlend ride hither, when your father comes home—that he confess openly he hath done you a great wrong—and put himself in Lavrans’ hands.” “I trow that, then, father would kill Erlend,” said Kristin. “That would not Lavrans, if Erlend refuse to draw steel against his love’s father.” “I have no mind that Erlend should be humbled in such wise,” said Kristin. “And I would not father should know that Erlend had touched me, before he asked for me in seemliness and honour.” “Think you Lavrans will be less wroth,” asked Aashild, “when he hears that you have fled from his house with Erlend; and think you ’twill be a lighter sorrow for him to bear? So long as you live with Erlend, and your father has not given you to him, you can be naught but his paramour before the law.” “’Tis another thing,” said Kristin, “if I be Erlend’s paramour after he has tried in vain to win me for his lawful wife.” Lady Aashild was silent. She thought of her meeting with Lavrans Björgulfsön when he came home and learnt that his daughter had been stolen away. Then Kristin said: “I see well, Lady Aashild, I seem to you an evil, thankless child. But so has it been in this house ever since father came from the Haugathing, that every day has been a torment to him and to me. ’Tis best for all that there be an end of this matter.” * * * * * They rode from Jörundgaard betimes the next day, and came to Haugen a little after nones. Erlend met them in the courtyard, and Kristin threw herself into his arms, paying no heed to the man who was with her and Lady Aashild.