That he held in his right hand.'

'But--but--this I know! This is an old song! This I have heard sung! This is
a miracle,' Sir Richard interrupted. 'Nay, do not stop!' He leaned
forward, and the shadows of the leaves slipped and slid upon his
chain-mail.

'I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old sea-faring men
Came to me now and then
With their Sagas of the Seas.'

His hand fell on the hilt of the great sword. 'This is truth,' he cried,
'for so did it happen to me,' and he beat time delightedly to the tramp of
verse after verse.

'"And now the land," said Othere,
"Bent southward suddenly,
And I followed the curving shore,
And ever southward bore
Into a nameless sea."'

'A nameless sea!' he repeated. 'So did I--so did Hugh and I.'

'Where did you go? Tell us,' said Una.

'Wait. Let me hear all first.' So Dan read to the poem's very end.

'Good,' said the knight. 'That is Othere's tale--even as I have heard the
men in the Dane ships sing it. Not in those same valiant words, but
something like to them.'

'Have you ever explored North?' Dan shut the book.

'Nay. My venture was South. Farther South than any man has fared, Hugh and
I went down with Witta and his heathen.' He jerked the tall sword forward,
and leaned on it with both hands; but his eyes looked long past them.

'I thought you always lived here,' said Una, timidly.

'Yes; while my Lady AElueva lived. But she died. She died. Then, my eldest
son being a man, I asked De Aquila's leave that he should hold the Manor
while I went on some journey or pilgrimage--to forget. De Aquila, whom the
Second William had made Warden of Pevensey in Earl Mortain's place, was
very old then, but still he rode his tall, roan horses, and in the saddle
he looked like a little white falcon. When Hugh, at Dallington over
yonder, heard what I did, he sent for my second son, whom being unmarried
he had ever looked upon as his own child, and, by De Aquila's leave, gave
him the Manor of Dallington to hold till he should return. Then Hugh came
with me.'

'When did this happen?' said Dan.

'That I can answer to the very day, for as we rode with De Aquila by
Pevensey--have I said that he was Lord of Pevensey and of the Honour of the
Eagle?--to the Bordeaux ship that fetched him his wines yearly out of
France, a Marsh man ran to us crying that he had seen a great black goat
which bore on his back the body of the King, an