ere there are no
women!" he told himself. "Yes! Oh, yes! Here once more I shall rule
my thoughts like a man." When a page finally came to summon him, he
followed with buoyant step and so gallant a bearing that more than one
turned to look at him as he passed.

"Yonder goes the new Marshal," he heard one say to another, and gave the
words a fleeting wonder.

The bare stone hall into which the boy ushered him was the same room in
which he had had his last audience, and now as then the King sat in
the great carved chair by the chimney-piece, but other things were so
changed that inside the threshold the Etheling checked his swinging
stride to gaze incredulously. No soldiers were to be seen but the
sentinels that had been placed beside the doorways, stiff as their
gilded pikes, and they counted strictly in the class with the ebony
footstools and other furnishings. The knots of men, scattered here
and there in buzzing discussion, were all dark-robed merchants and
white-bearded judges, while around the table under the window a dozen
shaven-headed monks were working busily with writing tools. The King
himself was no longer armored, but weapon-less and clad in velvet.
Stopping uncertainly, Sebert took from his head the helmet which he
had worn, soldier fashion, into the presence of his chief, and into his
salutation crept some of the awe that he had felt for Edmund's kingship,
before he knew how weak a man held up the crown.

Certainly Edmund had never received a greeting with more of formal
dignity than the young Dane did now, while Edmund could never have
spoken what followed with this grim directness which sent every word
home like an arrow to its mark.

"Lord of Ivarsdale, before I speak further I think it wise that we
should make plain our minds to each other. Some say that you are apt to
be a hard man to deal with because you bend to obedience only when the
command is to your liking. I want to know if this is true of you?"

Half in surprise, half in embarrassment, the Etheling colored high, and
his words were some time coming; but when at last they reached his lips,
they were as frank as Canute's own. "Lord King," he made answer, "that
some truth is in what you have heard cannot be gainsaid; for a king's
thane I shall never be, to crouch at a frown and caper according to his
pleasure. What service I pay to you, I pay as an odal-man to the State
for which you stand. Yet I will say this,--that I think men will find me