gnar might show his valour, which, of course, he could not
do if Griffin was there. Therefore the thane held back. But maybe you
heard all, and understood it."

"I heard all, lord king, and I will say naught."

The king waved his hand in sign that I was dismissed, and I bowed and
went. There were five rings of gold in the bag, worth about the whole
year's wage of a courtman, and I thought that for keeping a jest to
myself that was good pay indeed. There must be more behind that
business, as it had seemed to me already.

Now, as I crossed the green within the old walls on my way to the gate,
it happened that Havelok came back from the town, and as he came I heard
him whistling softly to himself a strange wild call, as it were, of a
hunting horn, very sweet, and one that I had never heard before.

"Ho, brother!" I said, for there was no one near us. "What is that call
you are whistling?"

He started and looked up at me suddenly, and I saw that his trouble was
on him again.

"In my dream," he said slowly, "there is a man on a great horse, and he
wears such bracelets as Ragnar of Norwich, and he winds his horn with
that call, and I run to him; and then I myself am on the horse, and I go
to the stables, and after that there is nothing but the call that I
hear. Now it has gone again."

And his hand went up in the way that made me sad to see.

"It will come back by-and-by. Trouble not about it."

"I would that we were back in Grimsby," he said, with a great sigh.
"This is a place of shadows. Ghosts are these of days that I think can
never have been."

"Well," said I, wanting to take him out of himself, "this is no ghost,
at all events. I would that one of our brothers would come from home
that I might send it to them in Grimsby. We do not need it."

So I showed him the gold, and he wondered at it, and laughed, saying
that the housecarls had the best place after all. And so he went on, and
I back to the gate.

Surely he minded at last the days when Gunnar his father had ridden home
to the gate, as the Danish earl had ridden even now, and had called his
son to him with that call. It was all coming back, as one thing or
another brought it to his mind; and I wondered what should be when he
knew that the dream was the truth. For what should Havelok, foster-son
of the fisher, do against a king who for twelve long years had held his
throne? And who in all the old land would believe that he was indeed the
son of the los