o the bondman. No, do not ask what I want with
him. Obey!"

Adalo left the tent. His heart was throbbing violently. "I shall see
her; ransom her! I will give all my property; nay, if necessary, my
estate, the land I have inherited--or sell it. But will she desire to
be ransomed? Will she not prefer to go with the clever-tongued Italian
to his sunny home? And what if he will not release her? Well, then
there will at least be one way to bring her forth, known only to the
Duke and my father's oldest son."

Fiercely agitated by such thoughts, he sent the bondman, who was
crouching beside the fire, to the tent. The slave stood timidly before
the mighty soldier.

"How long is it since Suomar bought you?"

"That's hard for Zercho to say. I can hardly count beyond the fingers
of both hands, and there are more years than fingers. The little elf
was very small then. My master got me cheap, for the Romans had dragged
many, many of us as prisoners from the beautiful pastures of the
Tibiscus. He exchanged a horse and a net full of fish for me with the
dealer over in Vindonissa."

"Suomar has praised you to me. He has never been obliged to flog you."

Zercho made a wry face and rubbed his ear. "Yes, my lord--once."

"And why was that?"

"When I first saw the little elf--she was then a child about seven
years old--I thought she was the wood maiden, red Vila, threw myself on
the ground and shut my eyes; for whoever sees her is blinded. Then he
shouted a word in your language which I have often heard since,--it
means an animal with horns,--and struck me. But never afterwards." The
slave had uttered all this very rapidly; he was afraid of the Duke, and
kept on talking to deaden his fear.

"You are faithful to the young girl?"

"I would be cut to pieces with the ploughshare for her."

"You plucked me by the cloak when you made your report in the presence
of the Adeling and the old woman. You wished to tell me something that
they ought not to know."

"That is true, great Father! How did you discover--?"

"That was not hard to guess. But I suspect more--the girl did not
become the captive of the kindhearted chatterer, Ausonius, but of
another Roman."

The slave looked up at him in fright. "Did your Odin, your terrible god
who knows all things, reveal this to you?"

"No, he only gave me the power of reading men's eyes. So she is
another's prisoner; I suspected it. And you did not wish to plunge into
still deeper grief bot