“Aye ’twould be best for you if you took after Lavrans both in mind and body, too. Yet ’twould be pity were they to wed you up here in the Dale. Plainness and country ways let no man scorn, but they think, themselves, these big folk up here, they are so fine that their like is not to be found in Norway’s land. They wonder much, belike, that I can live and thrive though they bar their doors against me. But they are lazy and proud and will not learn new ways—and they put the blame on the old strife with the King in Sverre’s days. ’Tis all lies; your mother’s forefather made friends with King Sverre and received gifts from him; but were your mother’s brother to become one of our King’s men and wait upon his Court, he would have to trim himself up both without and within, and that Trond would not be at pains to do. But you, Kristin,—you should be wedded to a man bred in knightly ways and _courteisie_—” Kristin sat looking down into the Formo yard, at Arne’s red back. She scarce knew it herself, but when Lady Aashild talked of the world she had once moved in, Kristin ever thought of the knights and earls in Arne’s likeness. Before, when she was little, she had always seen them in her father’s shape. “My sister’s son, Erlend Nikulaussön of Husaby, _he_ might have been a fitting bridegroom for you—he has grown comely, has the boy. My sister Magnhild looked in on me last year as she passed through the Dale, and he with her. Aye ’tis not like you could get him, but I had gladly spread the coverlid over you two in the bridal bed—he is as dark-haired as you are fair, and he has goodly eyes.—But if I know my brother-in-law aright, he has bethought him already for sure of a better match for Erlend than you.” “Am I not a good match then?” asked Kristin wondering. She had never thought of being hurt by anything Lady Aashild said, but she felt humbled and sad that the Lady should be in some way better than her own folks. “Aye, you are a good match,” said the other. “Yet you could scarce look to come into my kindred. Your forefather in this land was an outlaw and a stranger, and the Gjeslings have sat and grown moulded on their farms so long that soon they’ll be forgotten outside the Dale. But I and my sister had for husbands the nephews of Queen Margret Skulesdatter.” Kristin could not even pluck up heart to say it was not her forefather, but his brother, who had come to the land an outlaw. She sat and gazed at the dark hillsides across the dale, and she thought of the day many years gone by, when she had been up on the upland wastes and seen how many fells there were twixt her own valley and the outer world. Then Lady Aashild said they must go home now, and bade her call on Arne. So Kristin put her hands to her mouth, and hallooed and waved her kerchief, till she saw the red spot in the farm-place move and wave back. * * * * *