So they turned back into the house. “What shall we do now?” Bergthora said to Nial. “We will go to our bed,” said Nial, “and lay us down; I have long been eager for rest.” Then they laid themselves down on their bed, and the boy lay between them, with his arm round the old woman’s neck. “Put over us that hide,” said Nial to his steward, “and mark where we lie, for I mean not to stir an inch hence however the smoke or fire torment me. Here in this spot you will find our bones, if you come afterwards to look for them.” The steward spread the hide over the bed, and then he went out with the others. Then Nial and Bergthora signed themselves and the boy with the cross, and confided their souls into God’s hand, and that was the last word that they were heard to utter. Skarphedinn saw how his father laid him down, and laid himself out, and he said this: “Our father goes early to bed to-night, and that is meet, for he is an old man.” Then for a time Skarphedinn and Kari and Grim stood side by side, catching the brands as they fell and throwing them out at their enemies; and Flosi’s men hurled spears from without, but they caught them and sent them back again. But in the end Flosi bade his men cease throwing their spears, and sit down till the fire had done its work. One man only escaped from the burning, and that was Kari, who leaped out on a fallen cross-beam, Skarphedinn helping him. “Leap thou first,” said Kari, “and I will leap after you, and we will get away in the smoke together.” But Skarphedinn refused, and would not go until Kari had got safe away, for he had run along under the smoke, his hair and his cloak blazing; and he ran till he came to a stream, and threw himself into it, and so put out the flames; and he rested in a hollow, and got away after that. But when Skarphedinn leaped to follow him the cross-beam gave way in the middle where it had been burnt, and he was thrown backward into the house; and with a great crash the end of the roof fell above him so that he was shut in between the gable and the roof and could not stir a step. All night the fire burned fitfully, sometimes blazing up and sometimes burning low, and those outside watched it till dawn. And they said that all in the house must have been burned long ago. Then Flosi told them to get on their horses and ride away, and they were glad to do that. But as they rode from the place they heard, or thought they heard, a song rising from far down in the fire beneath them, and they shuddered and looked each in the other’s face for fear. “That song is Skarphedinn’s, dead or alive,” they said. Some of them were for turning back to look for him, but Flosi forbade them, and urged them to ride away as quickly as they could, for there was no man he feared so much as Skarphedinn.