recovering the gilded rings. Yellow hair and red hair and brown
hair curled on their gaudy shoulders, but no black. In all the
picture there was but one figure crowned with such raven locks as had
distinguished Fridtjof the Bold, and that figure belonged to a girl
standing directly opposite by the mossy curb of the old well, which,
guarded by a circle of carefully tended trees, rose like an altar in
the centre of the inclosure. Four of the red-cloaked Danish nobles stood
about her,--and one of them wore a golden circlet upon the gold of his
hair,--but the Etheling's eyes passed them almost unheedingly to dwell
upon the black-tressed maiden.

Something about her, while it was entirely strange, was yet so absurdly
familiar. She was some very high-born lady, there could be no doubt of
that, for the delicate fabric of her trailing kirtle was flowered with
gold, and gold and coral were twined in the dusky softness of her hair
and hung around her neck in a costly chain, which the King was fingering
idly as he talked with her. Now she looked up to answer the jesting
words, and the man in the passage saw her smile and shake back her
clustering curls with a gesture so familiar... so familiar...

Rothgar's gloating eyes detected light breaking in his victim's face,
incredulity, amazement, consternation; and he began to jeer under his
breath. "A great joy is this that you see your Fridtjof again! Why do
you not go in boldly and rescue him? Does he not look to be in need of
your help?" To stifle his laughter, he muffled his head in his cloak and
leaned, shaking, against the wall.

Flushing a deeper and deeper red, the Lord of Ivarsdale stared at the
smiling maiden. Just so, a hundred times, she had lifted her sparkling
face toward him, and he--fool that he was!--where had been his eyes?
Perhaps it is not strange that after the surprise had faded from his
look, the first feeling to show was bitterest mortification. Turning, he
forced a laugh between his teeth.

"I do not deny you the right to be amused. You speak truly that she
needs no help from me. I will hinder you no longer."

Rothgar leaped forward to bar the passage, and the mantle that fell from
his face showed no laughter of mouth or eyes. "I have not as yet spoken
harm, but it is not sure that I do not mean it," he said. "If you take
it in this manner to see how you have been tricked, you may suppose how
well I like it to remember the lies she fed to me, who would have