ishmen sprawled around
the camp-fire. It was to no graceful love-song that his harp lent its
swelling chords, but to a stern chant of mighty deeds, whose ringing
notes sped through the forest like the bearers of war-arrows, knocking
at the door of each sleeping echo until it awoke and carried on the
summons.

Echoes awoke as well in the breasts of those who listened. When the
minstrel laid aside his harp for his cup, Snorri Scar-Cheek brought his
fist down in a mighty blow upon the earth. "To hear such words and know
one's self doomed to wallow in mast!"

A dozen shaggy heads wagged surly acquiescence. But from the figure
outstretched upon the splendid bearskin a harsh voice sounded. "Now! see
that because you lie in mast you have a swine's wit," it said. "Do you
want the thrall to stand forth and prove for the hundredth time that
their bins must needs be as empty as your head?"

Venturing no more than a growl, the man dropped his chin back upon his
fists. But Brown-Cloak, the English serf, found somewhere the notion
that here was an opportunity to rehearse once more the service which was
his sole claim upon his new masters' indulgence, and he got on his legs
accordingly.

"I can say soothly that you will not have to bear it much longer, Lord
Dale," he reassured. "My own eyes saw that--" He ended in a howl as a
half-gnawed sheep-bone from the warrior's hand struck him with a force
that knocked him sprawling among the ashes.

"Do not trouble yourself to answer until you are questioned," the
Scar-Cheek recommended briefly. And a round of laughter followed the
poor scapegoat as he picked himself up, groaning, and crept away into
the shadow. In the restlessness of their inactivity, and this swift
breaking into passages of growling and tooth-play whenever, in their
narrow confines, they chanced to jostle each other, they were like
nothing so much as a pack of caged wolves.

Into the den, a few minutes later, the daughter of Frode came on her
difficult mission. Her face was so ghastly that the man who first caught
sight of it did not recognize her, and snatched up his weapon as against
an enemy. It was the Scar-Cheek who offered the first welcome in a
jovial shout. "The hawk escaped from the cage! Well done, champion! Did
you batter a way out with your mighty fists? Did you get fretful and
slay the Englishman? Leave off your bashfulness and tell us your deeds
of valor!" A score of hands were stretched forth to draw the