eat,
another carried around the brimming horns; and to the sound of cheers
and hand-clapping, the gleeman moved forward toward the harp that
awaited him by the fireside.

Where the glow lay rosiest, the young lord sat in the great raised
chair, jesting with his Danish page who knelt on the step at his side.
Now the boy's answering provoked him to laughter, and he put out a hand
and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses
caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at
the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of
a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it a sheen of rainbow lights.

"Never did I think there could be any black hair so alluring," he said
involuntarily.

He could not see how the face under the clark veil grew suddenly as
bright as though the sun had risen in it. And the lad said, rather
breathlessly, "I wonder at your words, lord. You know that such hair is
the curse of black elves."

Leaning back in his chair, the Etheling shook his head in whimsical
obstinacy. "Not so, not so," he persisted. "It has to it more lustre
than has yellow. My lady-love shall have just such locks."

He had a glimpse like the flash of a bluebird's wing in the sun, as the
page glanced up at him, and the sight of a face grown suddenly rose-red.
Then the boy turned shyly, and slipping back to his cushion on the
step, nestled himself against the chair-arm with a sigh that was almost
pathetic in its happiness.

Like a quieting hand, the first of the mellow chords fell upon the noise
of the revel. The servants bearing away the dishes began to tread the
rushes on tiptoe, and a dozen frowns rebuked any clatter. Through the
hush, the gleeman began to sing the "Romance of King Offa," the king who
married a wood nymph for dear love's sake. It began with the wooing and
the winning, out in the leafy greenwood amid bird-voices and murmuring
brooks; but before long the enmity of the queen-mother entered, with
jarring discords, to send the lovers through bitter trials. Lord and
page, man and maid and serf, strained eye and ear toward the harper's
tattered figure. So breathless grew the listening stillness that the
crackling of the fire became an annoyance. What matter that outside
an autumn wind was howling through the forest and stripping the leaves
through the vines? Within sound of the mellow harp-music it was balmiest
spring-time, as the castlefolk followe