CHAPTER III OF THE RIDE TO THINGVALLA––––––––
There lived in Waterdale, a day's journey from Biarg, an old bonder, named Thorkel Krafla. He was the first Icelander who became a Christian.
In heathen times, among the Northmen as among the Romans, it was allowable for parents to expose their children to death, if they did not want to have the trouble of rearing them. Now Thorkel had been so exposed, with a napkin over his face. It so happened that a great chief called Thorkel Mani was riding along one day, thinking about the gods that he had been taught to believe in, who drank and got drunk, and fought each other, and, being a grave, meditative man, he could not make out what these rollicking, fighting gods could have had to do with the world,—with the creation of sun, moon, and stars, an
