Ingulph, a couple of jovial harvesters sprawled beside him, a fat skin
of ale in his hands on its way to his mouth. As the pair on the hilltop
looked down, one of the trio began to bellow out a song that bore no
resemblance whatever to a hymn. Keeping under cover of the bushes, the
eavesdroppers laughed with malicious enjoyment.

"But I will make him squirm for that!" the Etheling vowed. "I will tell
him that your paganism has made spells over me so that I cannot tell a
holy relique from an ale-skin; and a bedridden woman looks to me like
two strapping yeomen. I will, I swear it!"

"And I shall be able to hold it against him as a shield, the next time
he is desirous to fret me about taking a new belief," the boy rejoiced.

But presently Sebert's remarks began to take a new tone. "They have the
appearance of relishing what they have in that skin," he observed
first. And then, "I should not mind putting my own teeth into that
bread-and-cheese." And at last, "By Saint Swithin, lad, I think they
have more sense than we, that linger a half-hour's ride from food with
a noonday sun standing in the sky! It is borne in upon me that I am
starving."

Backing his horse out of the brush, he was putting him about in great
haste, when the boy leaped in his stirrups and clapped his hands.

"Lord, we need not be a half-hour from food! Yonder, across the stubble,
is a farmhouse. If you would consent that I might use your name, then
would I ride thither and get their best, and serve it to you here in the
elves' own feast-hall."

The answer was a slap on the green shoulders that nearly tumbled their
owner from the saddle. "Now, I was right to call you elf, for you have
more than human cleverness!" the Etheling cried gayly. "Do so, by
all means, dear lad; and I promise in return that I will tell every
puffed-up dolt at home that you are the blithest comrade who ever fitted
himself to man's moods. There, if that contents you, give wings to your
heels!"

Chapter XIII. When Might Made Right

Now may we understand
That men's wisdom
And their devices
And their councils
Are like naught
'Gainst God's resolve.
Saxon Chronicle.

What difference that, somewhere beyond the hills, men were fighting
and castles were burning? At Ivarsdale in the shelter and cheer of the
lord's great hall, the feast of the barley beer was at its height. While
one set of serfs bore away the remnants of roast and loaf and sweetm