any further jostling or
rude contact. Elfgiva sparkled with delight and greeted the Tall One
with more affability than she had ever before deigned his gruffness.

"Since my royal lord came not himself to meet us," she said
graciously,--and pushing her hood entirely back so that he might get
the full benefit of her face, "he has well honored us in his messengers,
than whom no persons could be more welcome. I pray you, tell me without
delay how it stands with his health and his fortunes."

Turning from a muttered word to the soldier at his side, Thorkel
answered her with his usual curtness. "He thrives well, but his time is
full of great matters. To-day he is with the English Witan. Yesterday
they chose him to be their king. To-morrow he is to be crowned."

"To-morrow? And he would have let me remain in ignorance!" The Lady of
Northampton was unable to repress a start of anger, though she turned it
as soon as possible into a plaintive sigh. "Let me be thankful that my
arrival is not too late. I cannot tell you how we have been beset with
hardships!" Whereupon, she instantly began telling him, giving free rein
to eyes and lips and all the graceful tricks of her hands. It did not
disturb her in the least that he rode beside her in silence, when she
had observed that from under the bristling thatch of his brows his gaze
never left her face.

So complete was her preoccupation that she dis-regarded another
thing,--the highway along which they were travelling. It was Randalin
who first awoke to a consciousness that the noise of the rabble had
become very faint behind them, that no sounds at all broke the stillness
ahead of them, that the uneven weed-grown path they were treading was
very different from the smooth hardness of the Watling Street. Fens
on either side of them, a low hill to the front--was this the way to
London? For the first time, she spoke to the son of Lodbrok, who had
silently taken his place at her side.

"This is not the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned--Where are
we?" Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were
difficult to frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who
had caught the exclamation, had broken off her prattle.

"That is true! The crowd has disappeared--the stones are overlaid with
weeds--" In her bewilderment, she reined in her horse and would have
stopped to look about her, if Thorkel's hand upon her bridle had not
compelled her to remain in motion.