Ulvhild lay in bed. She lay alone in the sisters’ bed, and someone watched by her each night. It chanced sometimes that both Kristin and her father would be sitting by her. On such a night Lavrans said to his daughter: “Mind you what Brother Edwin said that time about Ulvhild’s lot? Even then the thought came to me that maybe he meant this. But I thrust it from me then.” Sometimes in these nights he would speak of this thing and that from the time when the children were small. Kristin sat there, white and desperate—she knew that behind the words her father was beseeching her. One day Lavrans had gone with Kolbein to hunt out a bear’s winter lair in the wooded hills to the north. They came home with a she-bear on a sledge, and Lavrans brought with him a living bear-cub in the bosom of his coat. Ulvhild brightened a little when he showed it to her. But Ragnfrid said that was surely no time to rear up such a beast—what would he do with it at a time like this? “I will rear it up and bind it before my daughters’ bower,” said Lavrans, laughing harshly. But they could not get for the cub the rich milk it needed, and Lavrans had to kill it a few days after. * * * * * The sun had gained so much strength now that sometimes, at midday, the roofs would drip a little. The titmice clambered about, clinging on the sunny side of the timber walls, and pecked till the wood rang, digging for the flies sleeping in the cracks. Over the rolling fields around, the snow shone hard and bright as silver. At last one evening clouds began to draw together over the moon. And the next morning the folks at Jörundgaard woke in the midst of a whirling world of snow that shut in their sight on every hand. * * * * * That day they knew that Ulvhild was dying. All the house-folk were indoors, and Sira Eirik came over to them. Many candles were burning in the hall. Early in the evening Ulvhild passed away, quietly and peacefully, in her mother’s arms. Ragnfrid bore it better than any had thought possible. The father and mother sat together; both were weeping very quietly. All in the room were weeping. When Kristin went across to her father, he laid his arm round her shoulders. He felt how she shook and trembled, and he drew her close in to him. But to her it seemed that he must feel as if she were further from him far than the dead child in the bed. She understood not how it was that she still held out. She scarce remembered herself what it was she held out for; but, lulled and dumb with grief as she was, she held herself up and did not yield— —A few planks were torn up from the church floor in front of St. Thomas’s shrine, and a grave was hewn in the stone-hard ground beneath for Ulvhild Lavransdatter.