re so clearly that she was sick with horror.
Sister Wynfreda's red-hot iron would not keep him back, instinct told
her. That sacrifice of beauty had not been simple-minded; it had been
the one alternative. The girl's light-hearted boldness went from her in
a gasp. Her shaking limbs gave way beneath her, so that she sank on the
nearest bench and cowered there, panting.

Though the men were too intent to notice her, in some sub-conscious
way her moving seemed to rouse them. Their discussion had been growing
gradually louder; now the bearded man and the young Jotun rose suddenly
and faced their companion, whose voice became audible in an obstinate
mutter,--

"Nevertheless, I doubt that it was wise to join hands with an English
traitor."

The older man said in a tone of slowly gathering anger, "I told you
to make the bargain, and I stand at the back of my counsels. Have you
become like the wind, which tries every quarter of the sky because it
knows not its own mind?"

While the young man warned in his heavy voice, "You will have your will
in this as in everything, King Canute; but I tell you that if you keep
the bargain, you will act against my advice."

Randalin had been mistaken in her deductions. It was not the brawny body
that was King of the Danes; the leader's spirit lodged in the slender
frame of the youth with the cloak of yellow hair.

He raised from his hands now a face of boyish sullenness, and sat
glaring over his clenched fists at his counsellors.

"Certainly it would become a great misfortune to me if I should act
against the advice of Rothgar Lodbroksson," he made stinging answer. "He
is as wise and long-sighted as though he had eaten a dragon's heart. It
was he who gave me the advice, when the English broke faith, to vent my
rage upon the hostages. Men have not yet ceased to lift their noses at
me for the unkingliness of the deed." His eyes blazed at the memory.
They were not pleasant eyes when he was angry; the blue seemed to fade
from them until they were two shining colorless pools in his brown face.

The son of Lodbrok shrugged his huge shoulders in stolid resignation;
but the wrinkled forehead of the older man became somewhat smoother.
There was nothing Jotun-like about his long, lean features, yet his
expression was little pleasanter on that account. From under his
lowering shaggy brows he appeared to see without being seen; and one
distrusted his hidden eyes as a traveller in the open distrus