For a minute they were too surprised to speak. Then Osla said
softly,--

"Your magic is too strong, Vandrad." She threw him one glance that
lived long in his memory, and quickly followed her father.

For more than an hour afterwards he could dimly see them pacing
the shore in silence, her arm within the hermit's.

Next day the old man was more silent and reserved than before, but
every now and then Estein saw that his eyes followed him, and the
few words he spoke were couched in a kindlier manner.

"Sing to him again," whispered Osla in the evening, and night
after night the young skald sang and the hermit and his daughter
listened. Sometimes when he was finished the old Viking would talk
on various themes. Brief glimpses of his earlier days, snatches of
religious converse, his travels, and the strange peoples he had
seen, he would touch upon before the evening prayer.

And so the time passed away, till Estein had spent six weeks in
the Holy Isle. All the while he had made no open love to Osla. She
seemed merely friendly, and he was distracted between a wild
desire to break down the barriers between them and a strange and
numbing feeling of warning that held him back, he knew not why. So
strong was it at times that he fancied two spells cast upon him,
one by the island maiden, the other by some unknown spirit.

One morning he found her wandering by the cliffs that formed the
seaward barrier of the isle.