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Sera Daniel looked searchingly at him, unwilling as yet to take any definite step himself.

“What are you paying this season?”

“Sixty-five for best white, forty-two for black and mixed.”

Sera Daniel glanced at him with a curious smile. “Is that—ah—the ordinary price, or what you are paying Ørlygur à Borg?”

The trader’s face flushed violently; the hand holding the glass trembled a little. Without waiting for an answer, Sera Daniel made another shot.

“Or perhaps you are thinking of paying the same price to all—for once?”

Bjarni eyed him awhile in silence. He seemed to be turning over something in his mind. The priest felt the glance, and knew what lay behind it, but evinced no discomfiture. On the contrary, he met the trader’s eyes with a smile of irritating calm.

At last Bjarni spoke.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “if you can let me have your wool tomorrow morning.”

That same night Ormarr sat on the slope of the hill looking down to Hofsa—just above the spot where the wool from Borg was washed every spring. He was keeping watch over the clip. Large quantities were already dry and stowed in bags; the grassy slopes were dotted with little white piles of that which had still to be spread, waiting till the morning sun had drawn the dew.