he should choose for his first landing, and thereafter
she would bide in his court until Eric had fled the land and the
power of Arnkel had ended with his fall. Then she would go to her
own place and be once more as a queen, while I would fare with
Hakon, and see what honour I might win.

Still, it was pleasant to sit on the deck in the soft, summer
weather, and talk with Thoralf's wife and daughter, Ortrud, and
watch Gerda as she forgot the hard things she had passed through,
and grew cheerful and happy once more. These two ladies were most
kind to her, and grew to be great friends in those long days at
sea.

One day, after we had left the Shetland Islands, and it wore toward
the end of the voyage, and we began to talk of where we might best
land and call on men to rise for Hakon, the elder lady, Thoralf's
wife, had been talking to me, and I think my mind had wandered a
little as I watched Gerda, who was on the after deck with Bertric
and Dalfin. The men were all clustered forward, and no one was near
for the moment.

"You two well bore the care of Gerda," she said in a low voice.
"See, she might never have passed through aught of peril or
hardship. Yet she will never forget those days of trial."

"She was very brave through them," I said. "The care was naught but
pleasure."

"Yet most heavy to you," she said. "I know you will make the least
of it all, but she knows well what she owes to you. Now, I would
have you think of what I say. It pleases you to call yourself her
courtman--well, that may be no bad way of putting your readiness to
serve her. But I would not have you forget that you are Malcolm the
Jarl."

I laughed, for the title never had meant much, even when my father
held it. Now it was altogether barren to me.

"So I am," I said; "but of no more use to Hakon for all that. If I
had a jarl's following now--"

"You are not needed by Hakon so much as by another, Malcolm," she
said. "To him you are one among many, and that is all."

"He has my first fealty," I answered. "He was the first who has
ever claimed it, and he has it, for good or ill."

"There was one who claimed your fealty before ever he saw you," she
said slowly, and smiling at me meaningly. "Will you forget that?"

I could not pretend not to understand what she meant, and I
answered her with the thought which troubled me.

"Lady, I cannot forget it. But now it does not seem possible that
she should care to remember. There is no reas