ealer, as is likely, you
will hear naught of him, and he will get him from Norwich as fast
as he may."

As I suppose he did, for neither I nor the sheriff heard more of
him, and next day his place in the market was empty.

I asked Erling of his shipwreck, and if Thorleif had been lost, but
he could not tell me. He had been washed off the fore deck as the
ship met a great breaker, and with him had come an oar, which he
clung to for long hours, making his way shoreward as best he might.
The ship was in danger at the time, and he lost sight of her very
soon. Presently some eddy of tide took him and cast him on the
sands of Humber mouth, and there he lay till he was found. That was
a month ago, and since then he had been hawked up and down the
coast with the other slaves till we met.

"But I was such a scarecrow, and so savage withal, that no man
would look at me," he said. "It was a good day for me when the
knave brought me to Norwich. Mayhap it was a lucky day for him
also, for sooner or later I should have got adrift, and then you
would not have been looking on to hold me from paying him somewhat
more than a beating."

Next day was the last of the fair, and again I went to seek a
horse, with my new follower after me. There was less choice but
more quiet, and soon I found that Erling knew more of the points of
a steed than I did. A Dane is a born horse dealer. So I sent him
one way while I went another, and when I was almost despairing of
finding what I thought would suit me, he came in search of me,
leading a great skew-bald horse, bright brown and white in broad
splashes all over him, in no sort of pattern. After him came a man
who might be a farmer, and looked as if he cared not whether he
sold the beast or kept him.

"The best horse in the fair, thane," Erling said to me. "I will not
praise his colour; but if you forget that and look at his build,
you will like him."

So I did; but if a man wanted to be noticed everywhere in such wise
that folk would reckon a week's time from the day when the man on
the skew-bald rode through the village, he could not choose a
better mount, and I said so, laughing.

"There is somewhat in that," Erling allowed; "but if you ride
through the foe at the head of your men on such an one, none can
deny that you did it. Nor can your men say that they lost sight of
you."

In the end I mounted and tried the horse. Presently I rode him out
of the town and away across the heaths, and