then the
rain swept up from the southwest and passed in springtime showers,
just enough to make us draw our cloaks round us for the moment,
soft and sweet. In the river the trout leaped at the May flies that
floated, fat and helpless, into their ready mouths, and the
thrushes were singing everywhere above their nests.

Those were things that I was ever wont to take pleasure in, and the
more since I had been beyond the sea. But today I had little heart
to heed them, for the heaviness of all the trouble was on me.
Maybe, however, and that I do believe, I should have been more
gloomy still had I been one of those who have no care for the
things of the land they look on, lovely as they are. I dare say
Erling the viking took pleasure in them, if he would have preferred
the wild sea birds and the thunder of the shore breakers to all
this quiet inland softness. At all events, he had no mind that I
should brood on trouble overmuch, and strove to cheer me.

"Thane," he said presently, even as I began to quest hither and
thither by the riverside for the track of the cart, which indeed I
hardly thought would have come thus far, "it seems to me that food
before search will be the better, an you please."

"Why," said I, having altogether forgotten that matter, "twice men
have told me that when Quendritha is at a man's heels he had better
not wait for aught. Yet I blame myself for having forgotten. It is
not the way for a warrior to be heedless of the supplies."

"When the warrior is a seaman also he cannot forget," quoth Erling.
"Had you bided with Thorleif for another season, you had found that
out. I have not forgotten. Dismount, and we will see what is hidden
in the saddlebags."

We went into a sheltered nook among the water-side trees, and he
brought out bread and venison enough for two meals each, and I was
glad of the rest and food. He had helped himself at breakfast, he
said, being sure that sooner or later we should have to fly the
palace.

"Well, and if we had not had to fly?" I asked.

"Betimes I wax hungry in the night," he answered, smiling broadly.
"It would not have been wasted."

When that little meal was done I leaned myself against a tree
trunk, and said naught for a time. Nor did Erling. The horses
cropped the grass quietly at a little distance, and the sound of
the water was very soothing.

The next thing that I knew was that Erling was bidding me wake, and
I opened my eyes to see that the sun was not