It was great wonder the child had not been quite crushed; but the log had chanced to fall so that it rested with one end upon a stone in the grass. When Lavrans stood up again, blood was running from the corners of his mouth, and his clothes were all torn at the breast by the bull’s horns. Tordis came running with a skin coverlet; warily she and Ragnfrid moved the child on to it, but it seemed as though she suffered unbearable pain at the lightest touch. Her mother and Tordis bore her into the winter-room. Kristin stood upon the timber pile white and stock still, while the little boys clung round her weeping. All the house and farm folk were now huddled together in the courtyard, the women weeping and wailing. Lavrans bade them saddle Guldsveinen and another horse as well; but when Arne came with the horses, Lavrans fell to the ground when he tried to climb to the saddle. So he bade Arne ride for the priest, while Halvdan went southward for a leech-woman who dwelt by the meeting of the rivers. Kristin saw that her father was ashy white in the face, and that he had bled till his light-blue garments were covered all over with red-brown stains. All at once he stood upright, snatched an axe from one of the men and went forward where some of the folk stood holding on to the bull. He smote the beast between the horns with the back of the axe—it dropped forward on its knees; but Lavrans ceased not striking till its blood and brains were scattered all about. Then a fit of coughing took him and he sank backwards on the ground. Trond and another man came to him and bore him within the house. At that, Kristin thought her father was surely dead; she screamed loudly and ran after, calling to him as if her heart were breaking. In the winter-room Ulvhild had been laid on the great bed—all the pillows were thrown out upon the floor, so that the child lay flat. ’Twas as though already she lay stretched on the dead-straw. But she wailed loudly and without cease, and her mother lay bent over her, soothing and patting the child, wild with grief that she could do naught to help her. Lavrans lay upon the other bed: he rose and staggered across the floor that he might comfort his wife. At that she started up and shrieked: “Touch me not, touch me not! Jesus, Jesus,—’twere liker you should strike me dead—never will it end, the ill-fortune I bring upon you—” “You?—Dear my wife, ’tis not you that have brought this on us,” said Lavrans, and laid a hand upon her shoulder. She shuddered at that, and her light-grey eyes shone in her lean, sallow face. “Doubtless she means that ’twas my doing,” said Trond Ivarsön roughly. His sister looked at him with hate in her eyes, and answered: “Trond knows what I mean.” Kristin ran forward to her parents, but both thrust her away from them, and Tordis, coming in with a kettle of hot water, took her gently by the shoulder and said, “Go—go over to our house, Kristin; you are in the way here.”