moonlight, and following it to the end, he found, after a little
search, the opening of another path. This at last divided into two
divergent tracks, and he had to confess himself completely
puzzled.

"I seem to be the plaything of fate," he exclaimed, after he had
tried in vain to recall Atli's directions; "let fate decide, life
is but made up of the castings of a die," and with that he threw
his dagger into the air, crying, "Point right, haft left!" It
landed on its point and sunk almost out of sight in the snow.
"Right let it be then," he said, and turned down the right-hand
path.

It had been so dark and their flight so hurried that nothing
remained in his memory of the night before, to show him whither
the way was leading. He only knew that he had wandered for some
time, when a prospect of white, open country began to show in
peeps through the trees ahead. Presently he came to the edge of
the forest, and saw that the cast of his dagger had led him wide
of his mark. A long stretch of treeless country opened out before
him, getting wider and wider in the distance. Near at hand a
narrow lake began, and stretched for a mile or two down the snow-
fields, and, like the greater lake they had passed, it was frozen
and shining white. Less than a hundred yards from him, between the
forest and the water, there lay a small village. A number of men
stood about among the houses, and from their movements and the
presence of two or three sledges he judged that a party must
either have lately arrived, or be on the point of departing. As
nothing further seemed to happen, he made up his mind that they
must be arrivals; and then, seeing little to be gained by waiting