"On my word, jarl, I cannot tell. Here have I been beset in my own
house, and but for your guests some of us would have come off badly.
There were outlanders who fell on us, and, as I think, stirred up the
folk to carry on the business, telling them that we had slain ourselves,
as one might say, for it was the cry that we had slain the jarl's guests."

"O fools, to take up the word of a chance stranger against that of your
own sheriff!" Sigurd cried, facing the people.

"Nay, but the steward said so likewise," cried some.

"Hodulf's steward?" said the jarl suddenly; "where is he?"

"Yonder. Biorn slew him."

"He was leading this crowd," said Biorn from above, "tried to force his
way into the tower past me, and would not be warned."

"What of the outlanders?"

"All slain. Seven Welshmen they were."

Then I said plainly, remembering that the jarl would have known him,
"Their leader was Griffin, who came with Hodulf at the first. What
brought him here, think you, Sigurd the jarl?"

But Sigurd looked round on the people, and scanned them for a long time,
and at last he said, in a hush that fell when he began to speak, "Men
who mind the old days, look at the man whom you have sought to kill, and
say if there is that about him which will tell you why Hodulf's men have