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[8] and night were more equal there than in Greenland or Iceland. . . . But when they had ended their house-building, then said Leif to his companions, ‘Now let our company be divided into two parts, and the land kenned;1 and one half of the people shall be at the house at home, but the other half shall ken the land, and fare not further than that they may come home at evening, and they shall not separate.’ Now so they did one time. Leif changed about, so that he went with them (one day) and (the next) was at home at the house. Leif was a mickle2 man and stout, most noble to see, a wise man, and moderate in all things.


Iii.—Leif finds vines, and goes back to Greenland.

one evening it chanced that a man was wanting of their people; and this was Tyrker, the Southerner.3 Leif took this very ill; for Tyrker had been long with his parents, and loved Leif much in his childhood. Leif now chid his people sharply, and made ready to fare forth to seek him, and twelve men with him. But when they had gone a little way, there came Tyrker to meet them, and was joyfully received. Leif found at once that his old friend was somewhat out of his mind: he was bustling and unsteady-eyed, freckled in face, little and wizened in growth, but a man of skill in all arts. Then said Leif to him, ‘Why wert thou so late, my fosterer,4 and separated from the party?’ He

1 Surveyed.

2 Large.

3 German.

4 Foster-father, or perhaps foster-brother.

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