er. The King whom a chastening Providence has set over the
northern half of the Island, has been our guest for the space of four
weeks,--together with the gold-bought English woman who is known as
his 'Danish wife.'" The monk's watery eyes were rolled upward in pious
disapproval, before he turned them earthward with a sigh of resignation.
"Nevertheless, it is the will of Heaven,--and he is very open-handed
with lands and gold when his meals please him." He cast a thirsty glance
toward the half-filled goblet which Sebert was absently fingering. "If
you have eagerness for a sight of him, you have but to walk through the
galleries until you come to the garden in which he is fleeting his time
with his women."

"Now I think I should like to take a look at him while I am waiting,"
the Etheling assented, rising gravely. "Should Edmund be the first to
pay the debt of nature, which God avert! the Dane will become my King
also. Is it this door that commands the cloister?"

"The door on your left," the monk corrected; and shuffled away lest some
envious chance should snatch the cup from him before his thirsty throat
could close on the sweet remnant.

At the moment that he was making sure of his booty in the safe darkness
of a passage, the Lord of Ivarsdale was pursuing his object along the
chill enclosure of the gallery. The November sunlight that, unsoftened
by any filter of rich-tinted glass, fell coldly upon the worn stone,
showed the carrels beneath the windows to be one and all deserted by
their monkish occupants, and he strode along unhampered by curious eye
or ear.

"After all this luck," he congratulated himself, "it will go hard with
me if I do not either stumble on the youngling himself, or someone who
can give me news of him."

He had no more than thought it, when the sound reached him of a door
closing somewhere along the next side of the square, followed by the
clank of spurred feet coming heavily toward him. As they drew nearer,
the rattle of a sword also became audible. Lifting his eyebrows
dubiously, the Etheling grasped his own weapon beneath his cloak.

When the feet had brought their owner around the corner into sight, he
did not feel that his motion had been a mistaken one, for the man who
was advancing was Rothgar Lodbroksson. It flashed through Sebert's mind
that the old cniht's forebodings had not been without cause, and that
Ivarsdale was in danger of changing masters by a process much quicker
than a