signs of ancient carnage; and that he had himself planted this field
with grain in springtide, thinking it more fruitful than the rest, and
hoping for plenteous abundance; and so, for aught he knew, the bread had
caught some evil savour from this bloodshed. The king, on hearing this,
surmised that Amleth had spoken truly, and took the pains to learn also
what had been the source of the lard. The other declared that his hogs
had, through negligence, strayed from keeping, and battened on the
rotten carcase of a robber, and that perchance their pork had thus come
to have something of a corrupt smack. The king, finding that Amletll's
judgment was right in this thing also, asked of what liquor the steward
had mixed the drink? Hearing that it had been brewed of water and meal,
he had the spot of the spring pointed out to him, and set to digging
deep down; and there he found, rusted away, several swords, the tang
whereof it was thought had tainted the waters. Others relate that Amleth
blamed the drink because, while quaffing it, he had detected some bees
that had fed in the paunch of a dead man; and that the taint, which had
formerly been imparted to the combs, had reappeared in the taste. The
king, seeing that Amleth had rightly given the causes of the taste he
had found so faulty, and learning that the ignoble eyes wherewith Amleth
had reproached him concerned some stain upon his birth, had a secret
interview with his mother, and asked her who his father had really
been. She said she had submitted to no man but the king. But when he
threatened that he would have the truth out of her by a trial, he was
told that he was the offspring of a slave. By the evidence of the avowal
thus extorted he understood the whole mystery of the reproach upon
his origin. Abashed as he was with shame for his low estate, he was so
ravished with the young man's cleverness, that he asked him why he had
aspersed the queen with the reproach that she had demeaned herself like
a slave? But while resenting that the courtliness of his wife had been
accused in the midnight gossip of guest, he found that her mother had
been a bondmaid. For Amleth said he had noted in her three blemishes
showing the demeanor of a slave; first, she had muffled her head in
her mantle as handmaids do; next, that she had gathered up her gown for
walking; and thirdly, that she had first picked out with a splinter, and
then chewed up, the remnant of food that stuck in the crevices b