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At the name, proudly laughed the elder sister, "Take thy husband, and be happy, girl; I envy thee not; I am the wife of the great Hill-king." "And does thy lord love thee? Does he sit beside thee at eve, and let thee lean thy tired head on his breast, as Esbern does with me?

When service was ended, and all went homewards, she lingered under the trees where the vision, or reality, whichever it was, had met her sight, half longing for its reappearance. But her mother whispered something to Esbern, and they hurried Hyldreda away. She laid aside her Sunday mantle, the scarlet woof which to spin, weave, and fashion, had cost her a world of pains.

But Iwar, the governor of Jutland, seeing no righteousness on either side of the impious conflict, avoided all unholy war by voluntary exile. Ragnar attacked and slew Esbern in the bay that is called in Latin Viridis; he cut off the dead man's head and bade it be set upon the ship's prow, a dreadful sight for the seditious.

The envoys themselves he punished with hanging, because they counselled him to so grievous a crime. The Swedes, moreover, slew the rest of the train of the envoys in the same way, as a punishment for their mischievous advice. So Esbern, thinking that his secret and stealthy manoeuvres did not succeed fast enough, mustered his forces openly, and went publicly forth to war.

Absalon was the keeper of the King's conscience who was not afraid to tell him the truth when he needed to hear it. And where they were Esbern was found, never wavering in his loyalty to either. Within a year Absalon was made bishop of Roskilde, the chief See of Denmark. Saxo innocently discovers to us King Valdemar's little ruse to have his friend chosen.

Then arose Esbern and reminded them of the great deeds of the fathers at home and abroad. The faith and the fire of Absalon were in his words: "These things they did," he said, "for the glory of their name and race, knowing nothing of our holy religion. Shall we, believing, do less? Let us lay aside our petty quarrels and take up this greater cause.

He sent a man aloft with flint and steel to strike fire in the top, and the pirates, believing that he was signalling to a fleet he had in ambush, fled helter-skelter. Esbern got home safe. The German emperors' fingers had always itched for the over-lordship of the Danish isles, and they have not ceased to do so to this day.

"The second him called they Absalon, A bishop he at home. He used his trusty Danish sword As the Pope his staff at Rome." Absalon and Esbern were not twins, as tradition has it. They were better than that. They became the great heroes of their day, and the years have not dimmed their renown.

Esbern, finding that these men were attached with a singular loyalty to the side of Ragnar, tried to bribe them to desert the king. But they did not swerve from their purpose, and replied that their will depended on that of Biorn, declaring that not a single Swede would dare to do what went against his pleasure.

But Hakon thought the death of his brother a worse loss than the defection of his champions; and, gathering his fleet into the haven called Herwig in Danish, and in Latin Hosts' Bight, he drew up his men, and posted his line of foot-soldiers in the spot where the town built by Esbern now defends with its fortifications those who dwell hard by, and repels the approach of barbarous savages.