d even tell him that Knud had died.

While Harald remained at home and aided his mother, Knud was of his
father's fierce spirit and for years attended him on his viking
expeditions. On one of these he was drowned, or rather was killed while
bathing, by an arrow shot from one of his own ships. Gorm was absent at
the time, and Thyra scarcely knew how the news could be told him without
incurring the sworn penalty of death.

Finally she put herself and her attendants into deep mourning and hung
the chief hall of the palace with the ashy-grey hangings used at the
grave-feasts of Northmen of noble birth. Then, seating herself, she
awaited Gorm's return. On entering the hall he was struck by these signs
of mourning and by the silence and dejection of the queen, and broke out
in an exclamation of dismay:

"My son, Knud, is dead!"

"Thou hast said it, and not I, King Gorm," was the queen's reply. The
news of the death had thus been conveyed to him without any one incurring
the sworn penalty. Soon after that--in 936--King Gorm died, and the
throne of Denmark was left to his son Harald, a cruel and crafty man whom
many of the people believed to have caused the murder of his brother.

_ERIK BLOOD-AXE AND EGIL THE ICELANDER._

In the year 900 Harold the Fair-Haired, the famous monarch who made a
kingdom of Norway, passed a law which was to work mischief for centuries
to come. Erik, his favorite son, was named overlord of the kingdom, but
with the proviso that his other sons should bear the kingly title and
rule over provinces, while the sons of his daughters were to be made
earls. Had the wise Harold dreamed of the trouble this unwise law was to
make he would have cut off his right hand before signing it. It was to
give rise to endless rebellions and civil wars which filled the kingdom
with ruin and slaughter for many reigns and at last led to its overthrow
and long disappearance from among the separate nations of the earth.

A bold and daring prince was Erik, with the old viking blood in his
veins. When only twelve years of age his father gave him five ships, each
with a sturdy crew of Norsemen, and sent him out to ravage the southern
lands, in the manner of the sea-kings of those days. Many were the
perilous exploits of the young viking admiral and when he came back to
his father's halls and told him of his daring deeds, the old king
listened with delight. So fierce and fatal were many of his fights that
he won the