Lodbroksson. Stifling a gasp, she shrank behind a tall chair.

He did not see her, however, for his eyes were fastened upon the King,
who had turned back to the window. He had cast aside the splendor of the
royal guards, wearing over his steel shirt a kirtle of blue that made
his florid face seem redder and gave to his fiery hair a hotter glow.
Two sentinels carrying shining pikes had followed him in, uncertainly,
and now one plucked at his arm. But the Jotun shook him off to stride
forward, clanking his heels with intentional noisiness upon the stone
floor.

At the clatter the King looked around, and the tone in which he spoke
his friend's name had in it more of passion than all the lover's phrases
he had ever paid Elfgiva's ears. At the same time, he made a sharp sign
to the two sentinels. "Get back to your posts," he said.

Hesitating they saluted and unwilling they wheeled, while one spoke
bluntly over his shoulder. "It would be better to let us stay, King, if
you please. You are weaponless."

"Go," Canute repeated. In a moment the doors beyond the curtain had
closed behind them, and the two men were alone save for the girl hiding
forgotten in the shadow of the chair.

Rothgar laughed jarringly. "Whatever has been told about you, you have
not yet been accounted a coward. But I do not see how you know I shall
not kill you. I have dreamed of it not a few times."

Something like a veil seemed to fall over the King's face; from
behind it he spoke slowly as he moved away to the dais upon which his
throne-chair stood, and mounted the steps. "The same dream has come to
me, but never has it occurred to me to seek you out to tell you of it."

"No such purpose had I," the Jotun said with a touch of surliness.
Pulling a bag from under his belt, he shook out of it upon the floor
a mane of matted yellow hair. "If you want to know my errand, it is
to bring you this. Yesterday it came to my ears that one of my men was
suspected of having tried to give you poison through your wife's British
thrall. I got them before me and questioned them, and the Scar-Cheek
boasted of having done it. This is his hair. If you remember anything
about the fellow, you understand that he was not alive when I took it
from him."

The King looked immovably at the yellow mass. "You have behaved in a
chieftain-like way and I thank you for it," he said. "But I would have
liked it better if you had come to me about the judgment that raised
this wall