ins, Valdemar was ransomed by his
people with a great sum of gold. The Danish women gave their rings
and their jewels to bring back their king. They flocked about him
when he returned, and received him like the conqueror of old; but he
rode among them gray and stern, and his thoughts were far away.

They had made him swear on oath upon the sacrament, and all
Denmark's bishops with him, before they set him free, that he would
not seek revenge. But once he was back in his own, he sent to Pope
Gregory, asking him to loose him from an oath wrung from him while
he was helpless in the power of bandits. And the Pope responded that
to keep faith with traitors was no man's duty. Then back he rode
over the River Eider into the enemy's land--for they had stripped
Denmark of all her hard-won possessions south of the ancient border
of the kingdom, except Esthland and Ruegen--and with him went every
man who could bear arms in all the nation. He crushed the Black
Count who tried to block his way, and at Bornhoeved met the German
allies who had gathered from far and near to give him battle. Well
they knew that if Valdemar won, the reckoning would be terrible. All
day they fought, and victory seemed to lean toward the Danes, when
the base Holsteiners, the Danish rear-guard whom the enemy had
bought to betray their king, turned their spears upon his army, and
decided the day. The battle ended in utter rout of Valdemar's
forces. Four thousand Danish men were slain. The King himself fell
wounded on the field, his eye pierced by an arrow, and would have
fallen into the hands of the enemy once more but for an unknown
German knight, who took him upon his horse and bore him in the night
over unfrequented paths to Kiel, where he was safe.

"But all men said that this great hurt befell the King because that
he brake the oath he swore upon the sacred body of the Lord."

The wars of Valdemar were over, but his sorrows were not. Four years
later the crushing blow fell when Dagmar's son, who was crowned king
to succeed him, lost his life while hunting. With him, says the
folk-song, died the hope of Denmark. The King had other sons, but to
Dagmar's boy the people had given their love from the first, as they
had to his gentle mother. The old King and his people grieved
together.

But Valdemar rose above his sorrows. Great as he had been in the
days of victory, he was greater still in adversity. The country was
torn by the wars of three-score year