“What is amiss with you, Kristin?” said Lady Aashild, a little sharply. “Now is the time for you to bear up stiffly to the end—not give way thus.” “I am thinking,” said Kristin, cold with dread, “on all them we have brought to sorrow, that we might see this day.” “’Tis not joy alone, I trow, that you two have had,” said Lady Aashild. “Not Erlend at the least. And methinks it has been worse still for you.” “I am thinking on his helpless children,” said the bride again. “I am wondering if they know their father is drinking to-day at his wedding feast.—” “Think on your own child,” said the Lady. “Be glad that you are drinking at your wedding with him who is its father.” Kristin lay awhile, weak and giddy. ’Twas so strange to hear that name, that had filled her heart and mind each day for three months and more, and whereof yet she had not dared speak a word to a living soul. It was but for a little though, that this helped her. “I am thinking of her who had to pay with her life, because she held Erlend dear,” she whispered, shivering. “Well if you come not to pay with your life yourself, ere you are half a year older,” said Lady Aashild harshly. “Be glad while you may— “What shall I say to you, Kristin?” said the old woman in a while, despairingly. “Have you clean lost courage this day of all days? Soon enough will it be required of you twain that you shall pay for all you have done amiss—have no fear that it will not be so.” * * * * * But Kristin felt as though all things in her soul were slipping, slipping—as though all were toppling down that she had built up since that day of horror at Haugen, in that first time when, wild and blind with fear, she had thought but of holding out one day more, and one day more. And she had held out till her load grew lighter—and at last grew even light, when she had thrown off all thought but this one thought: that now their wedding-day was coming at last, Erlend’s wedding-day at last. But, when she and Erlend knelt together in the wedding-mass, all around her seemed but some trickery of the sight—the tapers, the pictures, the glittering vessels, the priests in their copes and white gowns. All those who had known her where she had lived before—they seemed like visions of a dream, standing there, close-packed in the church in their unwonted garments. But Sir Björn stood against a pillar, looking at those two with his dead eyes, and it seemed to her that that other who was dead must needs have come back with him, on his arm. She tried to look up at Saint Olav’s picture—he stood there red and white and comely, leaning on his axe, treading his own sinful human nature underfoot—but her glance would ever go back to Sir Björn; and nigh to him she saw Eline Ormsdatter’s dead face, looking unmoved upon her and Erlend. They had trampled her underfoot that they might come hither—and she grudged it not to them.