h praise.
A stillness seemed to gather round them. Alwin felt his anger cooling
and sinking within him.

After a time, Leif said with the calmness of perfect superiority: "It
may be that I have not treated you as honorably as you deserve. Yet what
am I to think of these words of yours? Is it after such fashion that a
jarl-born man with accomplishments addresses his lord in your country?"

To the blunt old steersman, to the ox-like Olver, to the half-dozen
others who heard it, the change was incomprehensible. They stared at
their master, then at each other, and finally gave it up as a whim past
their understanding. It may be that Leif was curious to see whether it
would be incomprehensible to Alwin as well. He sat watching him
intently.

Alwin's eyes fell before his master's. The stately quietness, the noble
forbearance, were like voices out of his past. They called up memories
of his princess-mother, of her training, of the dignity that had always
surrounded her. Suddenly he saw, as for the first time, the roughness
and coarseness of the life about him, and realized how it had roughened
and coarsened him. A dull red mounted to his face. Slowly, like one
groping for a half forgotten habit, he bent his knee before the offended
chief. Unconsciously, for the first time in his thraldom, he gave to a
Northman the title a Saxon uses to his superior.

"Lord, you are right to think me unmannerly. I was mad with anger so
that I did not weigh my words. I will say nothing against it if you
treat me like a churl."

To the others, this also was inexplicable. They scratched their heads,
and rubbed their ears, and gaped at one another. Leif smiled grimly as
he caught their looks. Picking a silver ring from his pouch, he tossed
it to Valbrand.

"Take this to Kark to pay him for his broken head, and advise him to
make less noise with his mouth in the future." When they were gone he
turned to Alwin and signed him to rise. "You understand a language that
churls do not understand. I will try you further. Go dress yourself,
then bring hither the runes you were reading to Rolf Erlingsson."

Alwin obeyed in silence, a tumult of long-quiet emotions whirling
through his brain,--relief and shame and gratification, and, underneath
it all, a new-born loyalty.

All the rest of the day, until the sun dropped like a red ball behind
the waves, he sat at the chief's feet and read to him from the Saxon
book. He read stumblingly, haltingly; but