of you--more's the pity.
You have the Northern spirit so strong. I had forgotten it. Come, walk
by my side, and let me hear what you would ask. Holla, you Sweyn! carry
Vige up to the Castle, and look to his wounds. Now for it, young Jarl."

"My boon is, that you would set free Prince Lothaire."

"What?--the young Frank? Why they kept you captive, burnt your face, and
would have made an end of you but for your clever Bonder."

"That is long past, and Lothaire is so wretched. His brother is dead,
and he is sick with grief, and he says he shall die, if he does not go
home."

"A good thing too for the treacherous race to die out in him! What
should you care for him? he is your foe."

"I am a Christian," was Richard's answer.

"Well, I promised you whatever you might ask. All my share of his
ransom, or his person, bond or free, is yours. You have only to prevail
with your own Jarls and Bonders."

Richard feared this would be more difficult; but Abbot Martin came to the
meeting, and took his part. Moreover, the idea of their hostage dying in
their hands, so as to leave them without hold upon the King, had much
weight with them; and, after long deliberation, they consented that
Lothaire should be restored to his father, without ransom but only on
condition that Louis should guarantee to the Duke the peaceable
possession of the country, as far as St. Clair sur Epte, which had been
long in dispute; so that Alberic became, indisputably, a vassal of
Normandy.

Perhaps it was the happiest day in Richard's life when he rode back to
Bayeux, to desire Lothaire to prepare to come with him to St. Clair,
there to be given back into the hands of his father.

And then they met King Louis, grave and sorrowful for the loss of his
little Carloman, and, for the time, repenting of his misdeeds towards the
orphan heir of Normandy.

He pressed the Duke in his arms, and his kiss was a genuine one as he
said, "Duke Richard, we have not deserved this of you. I did not treat
you as you have treated my children. We will be true lord and vassal
from henceforth."

Lothaire's last words were, "Farewell, Richard. If I lived with you, I
might be good like you. I will never forget what you have done for me."

When Richard once more entered Rouen in state, his subjects shouting
round him in transports of joy, better than all his honour and glory was
the being able to enter the Church of our Lady, and kneel by his father's
grave,