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Sebert's frank face betrayed his surprise at the complaisance, but he gave his pledge and his thanks with what courtliness he could muster, and releasing his passive prisoner, pushed her gently into the safe-keeping of the old cniht. Yet he was not so obtuse as to step back, as though the incident were closed; he read the King's inflection more correctly than that.
"I do not believe that a tree-toad can change color more easily," he observed to the old cniht who rode at his side. "That Englishmen are not stout fighters, no man can say, but the love of it is not in their breasts; while with Northmen " "With Northmen," Morcard added, "to fight is to eat." Another faint smile touched Sebert's mouth as he glanced over his shoulder at the red-cloaked boy.
But presently Sebert's remarks began to take a new tone. "They have the appearance of relishing what they have in that skin," he observed first. And then, "I should not mind putting my own teeth into that bread-and-cheese." And at last, "By Saint Swithin, lad, I think they have more sense than we, that linger a half-hour's ride from food with a noonday sun standing in the sky!
"Here is the Englishman arrived, and he looks small enough now!" he cried in his thunderous voice. "Has it happened that I am to be the bower-thane who is to fetch you in!" Sebert's grasp tightened around his hilt. Apparently the son of Lodbrok was expecting him! Yet even on a forlorn hope, he deemed it wise not to commit himself.
I think that the next time you thrust your foot out to trip me up as I hand my lord his ale, you will attend to keeping it under your stool." Young Fridtjof regarded her with a kind of righteous indignation. "And I think that the next time you will look where you are going, even if it happen that it is Lord Sebert's ale you are bearing.
Mutters of mingled admiration and censure buzzed around; and one English noble, more daring and also more friendly than the others, drew near and spoke a word of friendly warning in Sebert's ear. Through it all, Canute sat motionless, studying the Etheling with his bright colorless eyes.
It flashed through Sebert's mind that the old cniht's forebodings had not been without cause, and that Ivarsdale was in danger of changing masters by a process much quicker than a month's siege. He stared in amazement when the Dane, instead of flashing out his blade, stopped short with a burst of jeering laughter.
When the moment of parting arrived, and Sebert's hand lay on the last bolt, that mood was so strong upon her that it seemed to her as though she were passing out of life into death. Clinging to his cloak, with her face buried in its folds, she wet it with far bitterer tears than any she had shed over her murdered kinsmen. "I wish I had not thought of it!
From the throats of the hidden choir, the last note swelled rich and full, to roll out over the pillared aisles in a wave of vibrant sound and pass away in a sigh of ineffable sweetness under the rafters. As he bowed his head in the holy hush that followed, the hush of souls before a wordless bene-diction, some of Sebert's bitterness gave way to a great compassion.
Sebert's hand was lifted from the red cloak to touch the thin cheek caressingly. "I should be extreme ungrateful were I to say less, dear lad. There is a man's courage in your boy's body, and I think a woman could not be more faithful in her love How! Are you cold that you shiver so? Pull the corner of my cloak about you." But the page cast it off impatiently.
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