e bound him to her? When I and little
Hertha were betrothed it had been nought to us but a pleasant show
wherein we had taken foremost parts--and across the gap of years of
trouble so it seemed to me still whenever I recalled it. I
remembered my confirmation at the good bishop's hands more plainly
than that, for well I knew what I took on me at that time.

But the knowledge of what our betrothal meant would have grown up
in our hearts had peace lasted. There had been none to mind me of
it, or of her, and warfare fills up the whole mind of a man. I was
brought up amid the scenes of camp and march and battle just at
that time when a boy's mind is ready to be filled with aught, and,
as he learns, the past slips away, for his real life has begun.

And these were strange days through which I had been. We grew old
quickly amid all the cruel trouble of the hopeless fighting. As
David, the holy king, grew from boy to man suddenly in his days,
which seem so like ours when one hears them read of in Holy Writ,
so it had been with Olaf--with Eadmund and Eadward his brother--so
it would be with Cnut, and so it was with myself. I have often
spoken with men who were rightly held as veteran warriors, and who
yet had seen less warfare in ten years than we saw in those three.
It was endless--unceasing--I would have none go through the like. I
know not now how we bore it.

So I had forgotten Hertha, whether there is blame to me or not. But
now, as I say, with the sudden slackening of warfare came to me the
longing for rest. I would fain find my home again and my playmate,
and all else that belonged to the past. But before I could do so
there was work to be done, and I was content to look forward and
wait.

Now I might make a long story of the doings of Olaf the king during
this summer. Ottar the scald has much to sing of what we wrought.
For we went through the fair land of Kent with our Norsemen and the
new levies, and brought back all the folk to Ethelred. It was no
hard task, for the poor people thought that Cnut had deceived them
by his flight; and they were ground down by the heavy payments the
Danes had levied on them. Only at Canterbury, inside whose walls
the Danish thingmen gathered in desperation, had we any trouble,
and we must needs lay siege to the place. But in the end Olaf and I
knelt in the ancient church of St. Martin and gave thanks for
victory. We had avenged the death of the martyred archbishop,
Elfheah.

Ethel