head, I have never had my life threatened by so young a thing."

He grew grave again as his glance rested on his captive. "I want you to
tell me something," he said presently. "You were Canute's page; I saw
that you accompanied him in battle. I want you to tell me what he is
like in his temper."

"It would be more easy to tell you what he is unlike," Randalin answered
slowly; "for in no way whatever is he like your King Edmund." She sat
awhile in silence, her eyes absently following the course of the
wind over a slope of bending grain. At the foot, it caught a clump of
willow-trees so that they flashed with hidden silver and tossed their
slender arms like dancers. "I think this is the difference, to tell it
shortly," she said at last; "while it sometimes happens that Canute is
driven by necessity or evil counsels to act deceitfully toward others,
he is always honest in his own mind; while your Edmund,--I think he lies
to himself also."

Morcard gave out a dry chuckle. "By Saint Cuthbert," he muttered, "too
much has not been told concerning the sharpness of children!"

But the Etheling made no answer whatever. After he had ridden a long
time staring away across the fields, he met the old man's eyes gravely.

"It is not alone because I am sore under his tongue, Morcard. Were he
what I had thought him, I would remain quiet under harder words. But he
is not worth enduring from; there is not enough good in him to outweigh
the evil."

Old Morcard said thoughtfully: "The tree of Cerdic has borne many nuts
with prickly rinds in former times, but there has been wont to be good
meat inside. Since Ethelred, I have been in fear that the tree is dying
at the root."

They swung over another piece of the road in silence, when the young man
started up and shook himself impatiently. "Wel-a-way! What use to think
of it? For the present, at least, I am a lordless man. Let us speak of
the defences we must begin to raise against Edmund's coming."

While they discussed watch-towers and barriers, the horses took them
along at a swinging pace. The heath-clad upland over which they were
passing sloped into another fertile valley, through which a lily-padded
stream ran between rows of drooping willows. Suddenly the Lord of
Ivarsdale broke off with an exclamation.

"It was not in my mind that we could see the old forked elm from here.
Hey, comrades!" he called over his shoulder. "Yonder--to the left--the
old land-mark! Do you see?" His