old footing of frank friendliness again.

There I found that I was mistaken at once. Some one was coming down
the lane after me quickly, and then calling my name. I turned, and
there was Erpwald, with a very red face, trying to overtake me, and
I waited for him.

"A word with you, Thane," he said, out of breath.

"As many as you will. What is it?"

"Wait until I get my breath," he said. "One would think that you
were in a desperate hurry, by the pace you go. Plague on all such
fast walkers!"

That made me laugh, and he smiled across his broad face in return.

"It is all very well to grin," he said, straightening his face
suddenly to a blankness; "but what I have to say concerns a mighty
serious matter."

"Well, then, get it done with," I answered, trying not to smile yet
more.

"I don't rightly know how to begin," he said in a hesitating kind
of way. "Words are as hard to manage as a drove of forest swine,
and I am a bad hand at talking. Can you not tell what I have to
say?"

"Not in the least," I answered.

It flashed across me that he might have found out who I was,
however, and wanted to speak of the old trouble.

"Well," he said at last, growing yet redder, "the Lady Elfrida is
angry that her name has been coupled with yours pretty much
lately."

He stopped with a long breath, and I knew what he was driving at.

"She has told me as much herself already," I said solemnly.

He heaved a sigh of relief.

"But she did not tell me that," he said in a puzzled sort of way.
"Well, it must not go on, or--or else, that is, I shall have to see
that it does not."

"The worst of it is that I cannot help it," said I. "Did the lady
ask you to speak to me of the matter?"

"Why, no; she did not. Only, I thought that some one must. Of
course, I mean that I will fight you if it goes on."

"Of course," I said. "But I can in no wise stop it. Do you know how
it began?"

"Not altogether. How was it?"

"Really, that you had better ask some one else," I said, keeping a
grave face. "I think that it would have been fairer to me to have
done so first. But if there was any real blame to me, do you think
that the ealdorman would have been glad to see me just now? I think
that it was plain that he was so."

"I am an owl," Erpwald said. "Of course, he would not have been.
But did you come to see the ealdorman, or the lady?"

"Why, both of them, of course. I have known them for years."

He looked relieved when he he