should serve at least until I could return and build the church
anew.

It was a sore grief to me that the old one was gone, for in it had
been crowned Eadmund the Holy, and it was rich with his gifts. And
our hall had been the first house in which he had feasted as
crowned king, so that we call the lane from church to hilltop St.
Eadmund's Lane since he rode along it in all the pomp of that high
festival after he left the altar. Only the ruins of God's house and
man's abode were there now, but the lane was bright with the
flowers that the good king loved, and the nightingale sang in the
wooded banks even as when he listened to it in the old days. We had
always these things to mind us of the martyr.

But Ailwin was not with the men, though he had been foremost in
working and planning with them. Nor had any of them seen him that
day.

So I waited for a little while and watched the work, wondering if I
should live now to do all that I would in making new the place. And
then as I walked to look across the bridge I passed a heap of earth
that the men had thrown out for the place of a post, and I saw
somewhat glittering in it, and stooped and took it up.

It was a silver penny, and when I rubbed the earth from it, I knew
that it was one of Eadmund's, mint new and fresh as on the day when
he stood in his robes and crown, even where I stood in the place of
the old porch, while the people shouted and scrambled and fought in
glee for the largess he threw among them. Doubtless this had been
so thrown and had been trodden under foot and lost.

Now it came into my hands even when my thoughts were most troubled,
and to me it seemed as a sign that I should surely return to the
place that the saint had loved. I was greatly cheered thereat, for
as I waited for Olaf to return I saw as it were the long hope of
home and peace dashed from me, and the pain of the coming war grew
plainer than I had known it in Ethelred's court. The old love of
home had waked in me as I wandered in the places of my boyhood, and
for the first time I learned the aching of the hearts of those who
had known more of home than I, and would lose it.

But I was young, and it needed but a little thing to turn my
thoughts, so this token as I say helped me to banish them. What
might not Eadmund the Saint, who slew Swein to save his shrine from
heathen hands, be able to do for me?

I would tell Ailwin presently, and ask him what vow I should make
in return for