ove, that I ought not to tell any one. It is another one
of those things that you must trust."

But for once the Etheling's will did not bend to her coaxing; his mouth
was doggedly set as he looked down upon her. "I trust no man I do not
know," he answered, "and I do not know Canute the man,--nor do I greatly
like what I have heard of him, or this plan of sending me from the City
at this time. You have no cause to reproach me with lack of faith in
you, Randalin, for when every happening--even your own words--made it
appear as if it were love for Rothgar Lodbroksson which brought you into
the camp, I looked into your eyes and believed them against all else."
In the intensity of the living present he forgot the dead past--until he
saw its ghosts troop like gray shadows across her face.

"Love for Rothgar Lodbroksson?" she repeated, drawing back. "Then you
did believe that I could love Rothgar?" Her voice rose sharply. "You
believed that I followed him!"

Too late he saw what he had done. "I said that I did not believe it," he
cried hastily. "What I thought at first in my bewilderment,--that could
not be called belief." Now it was the present that he had forgotten in
the past, as he strove desperately to recapture the phantoms and thrust
them back into their graves.

But she did not seem to hear his explanation as she stood there gazing
at him, her mind leaping lightning-like from point to point. "It was
that which made you behave so strangely in the garden," she said, and
she spoke each phrase with a kind of breathless finality. "You thought
that I--I was like those--those other women in the camp." As he tried
to take her hand she drew farther away, and stood looking at him out
of eyes that were like purple shadows in her white face. It was with a
little movement of anger that she came to herself at last. "And what are
you thinking of me now? Do you clare to dream that the King--" Turning,
she confronted the old warrior fiercely. "Thorkel Jarl, I ask you to
tell the Lord of Ivarsdale as quick as you can what the King wants with
me."

"That I will not do," the Jarl said quickly. "You know no prudence,
maiden. The Lord of Ivarsdale is also English; a mishap might occur
if--"

She flung the words at him; "I care not if it lose Canute his crown!
If you will not risk it, I will tell him that the King settles to-night
with Edric of Mercia and his men, and that it is to witness the
punishment of my kinsmen's murderer that