ship of another sort
that will be a better present. I will ask for that."

"What is it?"

"Build us a church at Watchet, and set there a priest who shall
teach us the way of the Christian. We have seen you forego a blood
feud and do well to the innocent man whom our faith would have
bidden you slay, and it is good. We know you for a brave warrior,
and your faith has not taken the might from your heart as we were
told it must. Only let the priest be a Saxon."

Then he added, as if thinking aloud:

"Ay, Odin and Thor and the rest of the Asir are far off from us
here. Our old faith falls from us, and we are ready for the new.
Let it be soon."

There I think that the hand of Nona wrought, for the Norse folk
fairly worshipped her. So it was not long before that good friend
of mine, the Abbot of Glastonbury, found me the right man, and one
day thereafter Nona and I stood sponsors for Thorgils and one or
two more whom we knew well, at the font in the new church which the
gold of Mordred built instead of the ship, and soon all the little
town was Christian in more than name.

There is happiness at Eastdean, and we meet with Erpwald and
Elfrida at the house of her father now and then, and they have been
here also. But I have never had time to go to Eastdean again,
though it is a promise that we will do so when we may.

It is the word of Ina my master that all things go well where I
bear rule for him, and I fear little blame, if little praise may be
for me, when Owen comes to us from time to time. If there is any
praise, it is due to my fair British princess, who is my best
adviser in all things.

So there is peace; and some day, and that no distant one, there
will grow up here a new race in the west, wrought of the blood of
Saxon and Briton and Norseman; and the men of that Devon and
Somerset that shall be, will have the doggedness of the Saxon and
the fire of the Welsh and the boldness of the Norse, to be first of
all England, maybe, in peace and in war, on shore and at sea. And
that will have been brought to pass by the wisdom of Ina, whose
even laws are held the wisest that the race of Hengist has ever
known.

It is in my mind that the lesson of the wisdom of equal rights for
all men, whether conquered or conqueror, is one that will bide with
us in the days to come, and be our pride.

Now it seems that I have told my story so far as any will care to
hear it. But if there has been aught worth telling it has cent