into a whirlpool. She threaded
her way among the groups as silently as the leaf-padded ground would
permit.

She had come in by the back door, but now she began to reach the better
quarters. Her nose reported sooner than her eyes that a meal was in
making; and a glow of anticipation braced her famished body. Here, in
this green alcove, preparations were just beginning; a white-robed slave
knelt by the curling thread of smoke and nursed the flickering flame
with his breath, while his circle of hungry masters pelted him with
woolly beech-nuts and cursed his slowness. There, a dozen yards to the
left, the meal was nearly over; between the gnarled trunks the fire
shone like a red eye; and bursts of merriment and snatches of boisterous
song marked the beginning of the drinking.

Sometimes a woman's lighter laughter would mingle with the peal.
Sometimes, through the sway-ing branches, Randalin caught sight of the
flower-fair face of an English girl, bending between the shaggy yellow
heads of the captors. Once she came upon a brawny Viking employing his
huge fingers to twine a golden chain around a white throat. The girl's
face was dimpling bewitchingly as she held aside her shining hair.
Randalin had an impulse of triumph.

"I wish that Sister Wynfreda could see that, now, since it is her belief
that Danes are always overbearing toward their captives," she told
herself. "This one has no appearance of having felt blows or known hard
labor. She could not have been entertained with greater liberality in
her father's house--"

She broke off suddenly, as the words suggested a new train of thought.
This girl must have been driven from her father's house by Danes, even
as she herself had been driven forth by the English. Yet here was she
eating with her foes, taking gold from their hands! Could she have
honor who would thus make friends with the slayers of her kin? Randalin
watched her wonderingly until leaves shut out the picture.

Another sentinel hailed her, and she gave him absently her customary
answer. He pointed to a great striped tent of red and white linen,
adorned with fluttering streamers and guarded by more sentries in
shining mail; and she rode toward it in a daze.

More revellers sprawled under these trees, and she looked at them
curiously. The women here did not seem to be amusing themselves so well.
One was weeping; and one--a slip of a girl with a face like a rose--was
trying vainly to rise from her place be