And now things took a strange and unexpected turn, so that Rognvald won the islands without any fighting. While Earl Paul was on a visit to his friend Sigurd of Westness, in Rousay, he went out before breakfast one morning and mysteriously disappeared. Sigurd sought him everywhere in vain. At last they discovered that he had been seized and carried off to Scotland by Sweyn Asleifson, and he never returned. Earl Paul’s men gradually came over to Earl Rognvald, and he became ruler over the whole earldom. Earl Rognvald now set about fulfilling his vow and raising a great cathedral in Kirkwall in honour of St. Magnus. In 1137 the work was begun under the superintendence of Kol, but many a long year was to pass ere it should be finished. As the work went on it soon became very costly to the earl. In his difficulty he once more went to his father Kol for advice. Kol said that Rognvald should declare himself the heir of all landholders who died, and that their sons should have to redeem their lands from him. A Thing was called, and this law was passed; but the freemen also had the choice given them of buying their lands outright, so that the earl might not inherit them in the future. Most of the landholders took that plan, and now there was once more plenty of money for the cathedral. When the work was so far advanced that part of the cathedral could be roofed in, the remains of St. Magnus, which had already been removed from Christ Church in Birsay, were laid to rest in the new minster. Many great men have been laid in the same place since then. Earl Rognvald himself was buried there, and there too the remains of King Hakon rested for a time before their removal to Bergen. While on a visit to Norway, Earl Rognvald made the acquaintance of a Crusader who had returned from the Holy Land, and he determined that he also would become a “Jorsalafarer,” or pilgrim to Jerusalem. The story of this strange voyage, in company with the Bishop of Orkney and many of his countrymen—half Vikings, half Crusaders—is well told in the “Saga of Earl Rognvald,” and in our next chapter we give part of the narrative. [Illustration: _On the “Viking Path.”_] THE JORSALAFARERS. “Earl Rongvald busked him that summer to leave the Orkneys, and he was rather late boun; for they had a long while to wait for Eindrid, as his ship did not come from Norway which he had let be made there the winter before. But when they were boun, they held on their course away from the Orkneys in fifteen big ships. “They sailed away from the Orkneys and south to Scotland, and so on to England, and as they sailed by Northumberland, off Humbermouth, Armod sang a song,— ‘The sea was high off Humbermouth When our ships were beating out, Bends the mast and sinks the land ’Neath our lee off Vesla-sand; Wave with veil of foam that rises Drives not in the eyes of him Who now sits at home; the stripling From the meeting rideth dry.’