This was the more needful, for now when he was seventy winters old troubles began to fall upon Nial and his sons. Evil men envied their prosperity, and hated Nial the more that all spake honourably of him and praised the valour and uprightness of his sons. These men of bad feeling went about to separate the old man from his friends and stir up suspicion against him, and it was thought likely that for all he was aged, and the justest of counsellors and a friend whom no backbiting could shake even when his friendship was sorely tried, his own prophecy of himself would come true, and that his end would be far from that which anyone could guess. But things went quietly for a time, because it was hard to bring a cause of complaint against Nial. At last they thought that they had found a handle to turn against him when he erected a new Court of Law in the island, which he called the Fifth Court; to this appeals might be made when for any reason a decision on a case was not come to at one of the Quarter Courts then established in Iceland. For there were many suits pleaded in the Quarter Court that were so entangled that no way could be seen out of them, and many said that they lost time in pleading their suits when no decision was come to, and that they preferred to seek their rights “with point and edge” of sword, and to fight it out; so that there was danger of anarchy in the country. But Nial’s plan was to refer these disputed cases to a higher court for its decision. But though all agreed that this was a wise plan, many of the judges in the old Quarter Courts were annoyed that their authority was lowered and the supreme jurisdiction given to the new court, in which were to be placed only the wisest and best men; and what angered them still more was that one of these new judges was Hoskuld, Nial’s foster-son. In the time of paganism there were no clergy such as we have to-day, but the chief of each large clan or family was its priest, and there was only a fixed number of priests in each district, men who were regarded as the head-men or chiefs of that Quarter. So long as the old faith remained in the land it was the head of the family who offered the sacrifices for his own people. Hoskuld was made a judge in the new court, and he got the priesthood with it; he was called the Priest of Whiteness. His judgments were so just that many men refused to plead in the other courts and went to have their suits pleaded before Hoskuld’s court. Out of this jealousies arose, and above all two enemies of Nial, Valgard the Guileful and his son Mord, were angry because their court was left empty, while Hoskuld’s was full. One night Valgard was sitting over the fire when his son Mord came in. Valgard looked up at him and said: “If I were a younger man I should not be sitting here very busy doing nothing while the court of Hoskuld is crowded with suitors; and now I regret that I gave up my priesthood to thee; I see thou wilt take no action to support it; but