glad. He had helped me all he could.

The earl left the party he was with, and came to me and my guards.
He looked at me sidewise for a while, and then spoke to me in broad
Wessex, which the Danes could hardly understand, if at all.

"So, Master Redwald, what will you give for freedom?"

I answered him back in my own Anglian speech, which any Dane knows,
for it is but the Danish tongue with a difference of turn of voice,
and words here and there:

"I will give a traitor nothing."

"But I am going to hang you," and he chuckled in his evil way.
There were many meanings in that laugh of Streone's.

"You can do as you like with me, as it happens," I answered, "but I
had rather swing at a rope's end as an honest man than sit at
Cnut's table as Streone the traitor."

He tried to laugh, but it stuck in his throat, and so he turned to
rage instead.

"Smite him," he said to the Danes.

"Not we," said the spokesman of the half dozen. "Settle your own
affairs between you."

"Take him to yon tree and hang him, and have done," said Edric.

"Spear me rather," said I in a low voice to the men.

They laughed uneasily, but did not move, and Edric again bade them
take me to the tree, which was about a hundred paces away.

They took me there and set me under a great bough, and then stood
looking at me and the earl. They had no rope, and the belts that
bound me were of no use for a halter. Edric saw what was needed,
and swore. Then he sent one of the men to the ships to get a line
of some sort; and I think that his utter hatred of anyone who had
seen through his plans made him spare me from spear or sword, for
there is no disgrace in death by steel. But at this time there
seemed no disgrace in the death he meant me to die, for it was
shame to him, not to me.

The ships were not so far off. It was not long before three or four
men came through the gathering dusk, and one had a coil of rope
over his shoulder. And after them came across the hillside a
horseman, beside whom ran a man on foot. There were many men about,
and these were too far for me to heed them. I only noticed that
which should end my life.

"Set to work quickly," said Streone.

So they flung the end of the line over the bough, sailorwise, and
made a running bowline in the part that came down. There is torture
in that way, and some of the men grumbled thereat, being less hard
hearted. So they began to argue about the matter, and Streone
watched my face, f