At the sound of her voice, the boy turned and hastened toward her. Then a great cry burst from Sister Wynfreda, for the face under the black locks was the face of Randalin. CHAPTER II. Randalin, Frode’s Daughter At a hoary speaker Laugh thou never. Often is good that which the aged utter; Oft from a shrivelled hide Discreet words issue. Hávamál. She made a convincing boy, this daughter of the Vikings. Though she was sixteen, her graceful body had retained most of the lines and slender curves of childhood; and she was long of limb and broad of shoulder. Her head was poised alertly above her strong young throat, and she was as straight as a fir-tree and as supple as a birch. A life out-of-doors had given to her skin a tone of warm brown, which, in a land that expected women to be lily-fair, was like a mask added to her disguise. The blackness of her hair was equally unconnected with Northern dreams of beautiful maidens. “Dark-haired women, like slaves, black and bad,” was the proverb of the Danish camps. Some fair-tressed ancestor back in the past must have qualified his blood from the veins of an Irish captive; in no other way could one account for those locks, and for her eyes that were of the grayish blue of iris petals. The eyes were a little staring this morning, as though still stretched wide with the horror of the things they had looked upon; and all the glowing red blood had ebbed away from the brown cheeks. She said in a low voice, “My father... Fridtjof...” then stopped to draw a long hard breath through her set teeth. For the moment Sister Wynfreda was not a nun but a woman,—a woman with a great yearning tenderness that might have been a beautiful mother-love. She ran to the girl and caught her tremblingly by the hands, feeling up her arms to her shoulders and about her face, as if to make sure that she was really unharmed. “Praise the Lord that you are delivered whole to me!” she breathed. “Gram told us—that they had taken you.” Gazing at her out of horror-filled eyes, Randalin stood quite still in her embrace. Her story came from her in jerks, and each fragment seemed to leave her breathless, though she spoke slowly.