Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... TO R. C. THORSTEIN is yours. You've made him yours By masterful appropriation: As long as right of might endures I dare no other dedication, Whatever name allures. You've seized my copy and revise, Absorbed the proofs, devoured the pages, Retold the tale in travesties, And sketched and played the personages In many a quaint disguise. Thanks, Robin: for the wide world o'er A writer asks no finer flattery, No kinder fate of all in store, Than Five-years-old's assault and battery Demanding more and more. But now to risk the wider test. Of one applauding hand I'm certain, -- Let doubts and fears go unconfessed. So stop the fiddle, --lift the curtain, -- And, puppets, play your best. r HERE BEGINS THE STORY OF THOR STEIN OF THE MERE. HERE was a man called Swein, CHAPTER I. who came into our country THE COMonce upon a time, and built ING OF THE a house at Greenodd on the NORTHMEN. Leven. His father Biorn had had been a landholder in Norway, ploughing his own acres, and living in health and wealth, until King Harald Fairhair fell upon the people, and fought with them and made himself lord and master. Then, it is well known, good men of the old sort, who could not abide to see new laws made and old laws undone, took to their ships and sailed away west. Some of them landed in Iceland; some went to Orkney, and others wandered about the coasts of the Irish Sea to find a home; and wherever they could get shelter and safety, there they settled. Biorn, with his people and his young child Swein, came to the South Isles, as they called them then, --the Western Isles we call them nowadays. He lived as best he might, and died at last in battle, when Harald swept the vikings from out of the seas between Lewis and Man. But Swein found friends and p
