Sister Wynfreda rose and took a step forward, staring at him in bewilderment.
"Fridtjof?" she questioned.
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.
Ha'vama'l.
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.
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