. I saw her look pass quickly over our dress, and minded
that we were in no holiday trim. She saw Bertric in the thrall's
dress, and Dalfin in his torn and scorched and sea-stained green
hunting tunic and leather hose, and myself only in the Norse dress,
and that war torn and grimed with the fight in the hall, which
seemed so many years ago now, and with the long sea struggle that
came thereafter. Yet she did not shrink from us.

"I cannot understand it all," she said. "How comes it that you are
here, and thus? You seem as men who have fought, and are hardly yet
restored after the weariness of fight."

"We have fought, lady, and have fared ill. We were captives and
have escaped; and as we fled by sea we fell in with this ship when
at our wits' end."

So I answered, for my comrades looked at me. The fight was mine, so
to speak.

"It seems well for me," she said, smiling somewhat sadly. "I had no
thought but to be burnt. Now I have escaped that. Tell me how it
may have been."

I did so, wondering all the time how she came to be in that
terrible place, for she spoke of escape. That she would tell us in
her own time, no doubt.

"What can be done now?" she asked, speaking to us as to known
friends, very bravely.

If she had doubts of us, she hid them. Perhaps that we owned to
being escaped captives explained much to her--else she had surely
wondered that the tattered Dalfin claimed to be a prince. Yet he
was princely, both in look and bearing, as he rose up and made
himself known, with a bow which none but a courtier could have
compassed.

"Bertric is shipmaster," I said; "he will answer."

"The ship is yours, lady, and we can but serve you," he answered.
"Now, it depends on the wind when it comes with dawn, as no doubt
it will, what course we can take, for we are too few to work the
ship rightly. We had thought of trying to make the Norway shore at
the nearest point we could reach, and so setting the ship, and the
hero who lies in her, in the hands of those who will do him the
honour that he needs at the last."

At that, to our great surprise, she shook her head.

"That you cannot do; at least, you may not go back to the land
whence he came. Hall and town may be in the hands of our worst foe,
else I had not been here."

"We cannot be sure of making your haven in any case. We should have
sought such haven as we might, had we been alone."

"And you thought nothing of the treasure, which will be surely
take