d not be
angered by his angry words. "But I do not care to risk blame to you
or me. Nought is gained by fighting thus."

"Ask Relf, forsooth!" he snarled. "I care not to hear again how you
lay hid in the pit yonder while others fought."

"Have a care, Eldred," I said then. "You grow heedless in your
anger, and go too far. I do not think that you mean this."

"Do you need to be called nidring {12}?" he snarled at me.

Now none heard that word pass between us, and though it made me
bitterly angry I kept my wrath back. Truly I began to think that I
was foolish to argue with him; but there would be grief, lifelong,
at Penhurst if deadly harm befell either of us where none could say
that all was fairly fought out.

"Are you not going?" he said in a choking sort of way.

"No," I said, "not until I know what all this is about."

"What good in going over that again?" he answered. "You know well
enough. Let me be--you have won."

"I know," said I; "but you have not told me aught. I can only guess
that you think that I have taken your place with Sexberga."

"Aye--and now you have won it."

"I want it not," I answered. "Had you not been so angry you would
have known that, when I bid you go back and meet her without me."

Now he looked at me with a sort of doubt, and said, in a somewhat
halting way:

"I heard you just now tell her that it could not be that you could
think of her--as things are."

Then I remembered what my last words had been, and I saw that they
might easily have misled him after all the trouble he seemed to
have had.

"You heard too much or too little," said I, being minded to laugh,
though the matter was over serious to him to let me do so. "I spoke
of my own troubles, which were the less because my fortunes prevent
my thinking of any maiden, seeing that I have no home to give a
wife when I find her. You were wrong in thinking that I spoke of
Sexberga--I spoke, as you might have known, of the one whom I have
lost."

"How should I know that? I know nought of your affairs."

Then thought I to myself that I would punish Sexberga, for she had
tortured this honest lover of hers over much.

"I will not tell you that tale. Ask Sexberga, who has known it from
the first."

Then I was sorry for what I had said, for he flushed darkly.

"I have been made a fool of," he said.

"Nay; but you should have been more trustful," said I. "Now, were I
in your place, I would go home to Dallington and bide th