since I was a
child, was almost as terrible.

"I would not leave you, my King," I said at last.

Ina looked up at me with a smile, but was silent, stroking his
beard as was his way when thinking, looking past me out of the
narrow window to the great Tor that towered beyond the new abbey
buildings.

"Think!" he said at last--"partings must come, and lands are not to
be had lightly. Erpwald's brother, who held Eastdean, is dead."

"I need no lands," I answered. "The ways of a captain of your
house-carles are good to me, and I need no more. If I took those
lands from your hand, my King, needs must that I gave up all the
life with you. Sooner would I let the land go and bide with you.
Yet if I must needs take them, be it as you will."

"It is a great thing that you speak so lightly of giving up," he
answered gravely; "Erpwald, the heathen, was willing to risk his
life for those lands, and he held them dear. And a captain of the
king's house-carles will always look to be rewarded for service
with lands. In time you will seek the same."

"That time has not yet come to me, King Ina."

"Eastdean lies in my hand here," he said, taking up a parchment
with a great seal on it. "I may give it to whom I will, but you are
the lawful heir who should hold it from me. If it goes not to you,
it may be that one whom you would not shall have it."

Then I said, not seeing at all what the king would have me do, but
thinking that he deemed me foolish for not taking the lands
straightway:

"Let me bide with you even yet for a while. When the time comes
that I must leave you I must go to Owen, and neither he nor I care
for aught but to be here. He must leave you because of duty, and if
this is indeed choice with me, let me choose to stay. It is nought
to me who holds the lands, save only that it might be one who will
tend the grave of my father."

Then said Ina, looking into my face and smiling, as if well
pleased:

"The choice is free, my Thane, and I should be wrong if I did not
say that I am glad to hear you choose thus. I have missed you in
these days, and I have work here for you yet. It was in my mind
that thus you would choose, and I am glad. Let it be so. I need one
to take the place of Owen, as second in command of the household,
as one may say, and that you must do for me henceforward.

"Nay," he said quickly, raising his hand as I tried to find some
words of thanks for this honour; "you know the ways of Owen, and
men