Then Egil stood up and spoke with loud voice: 'Is Aunund Sjoni here on the Thing-brink?'
Aunund replied that he was there. And he said,
'I am glad, Egil, that you are come.
This will set right all the dispute
here between these men.'
'Is it by your counsel,'
said Egil,
'that your son Steinar brings a charge
against my son Thorstein,
and has gathered much people to this end,
to make Thorstein an outcast?'
'Of this I am not the cause,'
said Aunund,
'that they are quarrelling.
I have spend many a word and begged
Steinar to be reconciled with Thorstein;
for in any case I would have
spared your son Thorstein disgrace:
and good cause for this is the loving friendship of
old that has been between us two,
Egil, since we grew up here as next-door neighbours.'
'It will soon be clear,'
said Egil,
'whether you speak this as truth or vain words;
though I think this latter can hardly be.
I remember the day when either of us had deemed it
incredible that one should be accusing the other,
or that we should not control our sons from
going on with such folly as I hear this is like to prove.
To me this seems right counsel,
while we both live and are so nearly concerned with their quarrel,
that we take this cause into our own hands and quash it,
and let not Tongue-Odd and Einar match our sons together like fighting horses.
Let them henceforth find some other way than this of making money.'