his name, "let me rig you
out afresh before we part."

"They call me Erling," he said. "Have you so many men to serve you
that we must needs part?"

"No," I answered, "but I am no sort of a master to serve. I will
help an old comrade home, however."

"Home was burnt a year ago," he said. "Let me bide with you, thane;
I must be some man's man. You will go back to the west presently, I
suppose?"

"Yes, after a time. What of that? for it is not your way."

"Your way is mine, unless you drive me from you. You have given me
my freedom, and I know it. Let me serve you freely."

"Well," said I, "you will be my only servant when once I leave King
Carl's train, with which I have come."

"So much the better," he said. "I am likely to be as handy a
servant as you can find, in most things."

"Oh," said Werbode, laughing, "take him, Wilfrid. Free service is
not to be despised. Moreover, if you want any one well and soundly
beaten, here is your man."

"I can keep the thane's back at a pinch, young sir," said the Dane
quietly. "That mayhap is more than most will do if they are hired."

"Faith, I believe you could," said Werbode, looking the man's wiry
frame up and down.

"Take him, Wilfrid."

"Why, then," said I, "so I will, and gladly, for just so long as I
please you as a master. And when you will leave me, you shall go
without blame. Now let us see to clothing you afresh."

So we went to the quarter of the fair where such things as we
needed were to be had, and there we took pleasure in fitting my new
follower out in all decent housecarl attire, not by any means
sparing for good leather jerkin and Norwich-cloth hose and hood,
for I would not have him looked down on by our Frankish servants.
And, indeed, with weapon on hip and round helm on head, over washed
face and combed hair, he seemed a different man altogether. The old
free walk of the seaman came back to him, and he looked the world
in the face again as the free warrior he was.

He had been Thorleif's own court man, he told me, and knew the ways
of one who should follow his lord, whether in hall or field, and I
will say at once that so he did. I had little to teach him beyond
some Saxon ways which came strangely to him at first.

We went back to the king's hall, and there I told the sheriff
somewhat of the business with the slaver, and he laughed.

"Not the first time I have heard the like," he said. "If the man
complains, pay him. But if he is a man st