place to winter. For week after week one gale followed another.
For days on end the spin-drift flew in clouds across the island,
salt and unceasing.

The sea was never silent, the gulls flew inland and the cormorants
sat storm-bound in their caves; brief glimpses of cold and sunny
weather passed as abruptly as they came, and in the smoke of a
driftwood fire Osla plied her needle and followed the wanderings
of her thoughts.

During all these months the hermit spoke little. So engrossed was
Osla in herself that she hardly noticed how seldom the cloud
seemed to lift from his mind. Never as before did he talk with her
at length, or instruct her from the curious scraps of knowledge
his once acute mind had picked up from sources Christian and
pagan, from the wise men of the North and the monasteries of
southern lands. He never once alluded to their guest, never even
apparently observed his departure, and in her heart his daughter
thanked him for his silence.

The lingering winter passed at length, and one morning, in the
first freshness of spring, Osla stood without the cell. Presently
her father joined her, and she noticed, though her thoughts were
busy elsewhere, that he wore a strange expression. He looked at
her doubtfully, and then said,--

"Where is Vandrad? I would hear him sing."

Then Osla started, and her heart smote her.