We read of these men and this people in stories which, somewhat too "old" for boys and girls, reveal the laws, customs, habits of a thousand years ago. The Njal's Saga, the Grettir's Saga, the Ere-Dwellers' Saga, and the Gisli's Saga are perhaps the greatest of those which have been translated. They are reinforced by such shorter pieces as Hen Thorir's Saga, and the Stories of the Banded Men, the Heath-Slayings, Hraffnkell Frey's Priest, and Howard the Halt. The spirit of those days is particularly well given in that wonderful fragment of Thorstein Staffsmitten which (not being part of any complete saga) has been drawn upon for the closing incidents of the present story. Many other such incidents are preserved, a reference to one of which (in a footnote to--I think--the Ere-Dwellers' Saga) gave the suggestion for the main plot of this book. At the same time, in contemporary writings, we may read of the life of other divisions of the Scandinavian race; the story nearest to this book is the Orkneyingers' Saga. The main interest of all these tales is the same: they tell of real men and women in real circumstances, and show them human in spite of the legends which have grown about them. The sagas reveal the characteristics of our branch of the Aryan race, especially the personal courage which is so superior to that of the Greek and Latin races, and which makes the Teutonic epics (whether the Niebelungen Lied, the Morte Darthur, or the Njala) much more inspiring than the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid. The prominence of law in almost every one of the Icelandic sagas has been preserved in the following story; and the conditions of life, whether at home or abroad, have been described as closely as was possible within the limits of the simple narrative form which the sagas customarily employed. ALLEN FRENCH. CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, _May, 1904_. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Of the Lighting of the Beacon 1 II. Of the Soursops, and the Curse which Hung on Them 20 III. Kiartan at Cragness 28 IV. Of Einar and Ondott 42 V. The Summoning of Hiarandi 53 VI. Of what Hiarandi should do 59 VII. How Hiarandi received the Lesser Outlawry 64 VIII. Of Schemings 78 IX. Of the Outcome of Ondott's Plottings 91 X. How Rolf named Witnesses for the Death of Hiarandi 101 XI. Of Rolf's Search for One to Surpass Him with the Bow 109 XII. Of the Trial of Skill at Tongue 121 XIII. Of that Robber 129 XIV. How Rolf and Einar summoned each other 145