But Nial’s enemies were loth to wait for his clearing at law, and they planned to bring about his death and the death of his sons. A man Flosi was at the head of these conspirators, and he it was who gathered together the party of men who had agreed to kill Nial. They all met together in Flosi’s house, Grani, Gunnar’s son, and Gunnar, Lambi’s son, and others with them. Now about that time strange portents were seen at Bergthors-knoll, Nial’s home, and from that Nial and Bergthora his wife guessed that the end was near; but Skarphedinn laughed their fears to scorn. [Illustration: _The Vision of the Man on the Grey Horse_] A Christian man went out one night of the Lord’s day, nine weeks before the winter season, and he heard a crash, and the earth rocked beneath his feet. Then he looked to the west, and he saw a ring of fire moving toward him, and within the ring a man riding on a grey horse. He had a flaming firebrand in his hand, and he rode hard: he and the flaming ring passed the watcher by and went down towards Bergthors-knoll. Then he hurled the firebrand into Nial’s house, and a blaze of fire leapt up and poured over the house and across the fells. And it seemed that the man rode his horse into the flames and was no more seen Then the man who watched knew that the rider on the grey horse was Odin, who ever comes before great tidings. He fell into a swoon and lay senseless a long time. Not long after this an old wizened woman who lived in Nial’s service went out into the yard behind the house with a cudgel in her hand. Nial’s sons called her the Old Dotard, because she would go about the house babbling to herself, leaning on her crutch; but for all that she was wise in many things and foresighted, and some things that she prophesied came to pass. She was ever murmuring about a stack of vetches that was piled up in the yard, that they should bring it indoors, or move it farther away, and to soothe her they promised they would do so; but the days went on, and something always hindered it. This day she took her cudgel and began beating the vetch-stack with all her might, wishing that it might never thrive, wretch that it was! Skarphedinn stood watching her, holding his sides with laughter. He asked her why she beat the vetch-stack; what harm it had done to her. “It has not harmed me, but it will harm my master,” she said; “for when they need firing for the fire that will burn my master, it is to the vetch-stack they will come, and they will light the house with it; take it away, therefore, and cast it into the water, or burn it up as fast as you can.” Skarphedinn thought it a pity to waste the vetch, so he said: “If it is our doom to die by fire, something else will be found to light the fire with even though the stack be not here. No man can escape his fate.” The whole summer the old woman was muttering about the vetch-stack, but time went on and nothing was done.