There also was
Gold-mane come back before them, yea for these two hours; and he
stood clad in his holiday raiment and smiled on them.
Then was there some jeering at him that he was come back empty-handed
from the hunting, and that he was not able to abide the wind and the
drift; but he laughed thereat, for all this was but game and play,
since men knew him for a keen hunter and a stout woodsman; and they
had deemed it a heavy loss of him if he had been cast away, as some
feared he had been: and his brother Hall-face embraced him and
kissed him, and said to him: 'Now the next time that thou farest to
the wood will I be with thee foot to foot, and never leave thee, and
then meseemeth I shall wot of the tale that hath befallen thee, and
belike it shall be no sorry one.'
Face-of-god laughed and answered but little, and they all betook them
to the House of the Face and held high feast therein, for as late as
the night was, in honour of this Hunting of the Elk.
No man cared to question Face-of-god closely as to how or where he
had strayed from the hunt; for he had told his own tale at once as
soon as he came home, to wit, that his right-foot skid-strap had
broken, and even while he stopped to mend it came on that drift and
weather; and that he could not move from that place without losing
his way, and that when it had cleared he knew not whither they had
gone because the snow had covered their slot.
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