he north or
south folk, and I knew it. No man would but hail him there
willingly. Our people had never forgotten that the Wessex kings
were far from them, and that little help came from thence.

Now, when I came to Egil, I told him that the letter I had gotten
bore messages to me from Eadmund, and I read it to him so far as I
have written here.

"This is good," he answered, when I said that it should be as the
king said. "Now are you Cnut's man and my friend indeed. Thorkel,
my foster brother, is to be Earl of East Anglia, and you shall be
Thane of Bures as ever. And I shall have to mind Colchester and
this shore, and we shall see much of each other."

So he rejoiced, and I grew more cheerful as the days went on. Then
Thorkel came, and together we went to Colchester, and thence he
bade me go to Bures in peace and take my old place, for he said
that Cnut and Emma the queen would have me honoured in all that I
would, even did he himself not wish to keep me as his own friend.

Then said I:

"What of Geirmund, your own man, who had Bures?"

Egil laughed.

"Geirmund is the man over whom I fell at your feet at Leavenheath
fight. You yourself have made an end of him. I wonder that you knew
it not."

So I went back to Bures, and there is no need to say how my poor
folk rejoiced. But Ailwin was not there, nor had Gunnhild been
seen. The young priest was there yet, and well loved.

Then I said to myself:

"Let things bide for a while. When peace comes altogether and
certainly, then will Ailwin bring back Hertha, and there will be
trouble enough then, maybe. As it is, my house must be rebuilt, and
the land has to settle down after war."

With that I set to work to gather the timber together from my own
woods, that we might begin to build in the coming springtime, and I
grew happy enough at that work, though I would that I worked for
Uldra.

Then came the news that Eadmund our king was dead, slain by
Streone's men--some say by the Earl's son, others by the king's own
men, whom he bribed. One will, I suppose, never know what hands did
the deed, but Streone's doing it was when all is told.

There is more in my mind about this than I will say. But Thrand,
who had been with me, begged that he might go to Colchester for a
while; and I let him go, for he waxed restless, though I knew not
what he would leave me for.

Then the kingdom was Cnut's, and he spoke to the Wessex nobles at a
great council in London in such wi