.. "It is by reason of that, that he has become
my lord's darling."... "Why is he not in the hall, then, while the
ethel-born is sitting at table?"... "Perhaps his luck is beginning to
fail him."... "Perhaps he has fallen out of favor."

The two old men who offered these last suggestions chuckled with
malicious enjoyment, and two of the old women mumbled with their
toothless gums as though tasting sweet morsels; but the third drew
herself up with a kind of grotesque coquetry.

"You can tell by the green silk of his tunic that he is of some
quality," she reproved them. "Danishmen are ever the ones to adorn
themselves. It occurs to my mind how, in Edgar's time, when I was a
girl, one was quartered in my father's house. He changed his raiment
once a day and bathed every Sunday. I used to comb his yellow hair when
I took in his ale, of a morning." Long after her voice had passed into
a rattle, she stood in a simpering revery, her palsied hands resting
heavily upon her stick, her blinking eyes fixed on the picturesque young
foreigner musing in the sunshine.

Then the voice of the steward sounded sharply in the archway. There
was an eager catching up of bags and baskets, a shuffling forward of
unsteady feet, and the goody came out of her day-dream to throw herself
into the strife over a jar of peppered broth.

The Danish page bent to pillow a very red cheek on the soft cushion of
the dog's head, then drew back and straightened himself stiffly as a
strapping serving-lass, flagon-laden, came out of the door behind him.
She saw the motion and looked down with a teasing laugh. "Aha, young
Fridtjof! How do you like being sent to cool your heels on the doorstep
while your master eats? What! I think that the next time you thrust your
foot out to trip me up as I hand my lord his ale, you will attend to
keeping it under your stool."

Young Fridtjof regarded her with a kind of righteous indignation. "And
I think that the next time you will look where you are going, even if it
happen that it is Lord Sebert's ale you are bearing. Silly jades, that
cannot come nigh him without biting your lips or sparkling your eyes! I
wonder he does not clap masks over your faces."

"And I wonder he does not clap rods to your back," the lass retorted
with sudden spite. She flounced past him down the step, on her way to
the great lead-roofed storehouse that flanked the forest side of the
Tower.

The boy looked after her sternly. "It is likely that