between us--"

Rothgar's throat gave out a savage sound. "Tempt me not! I am no
sluggish wolf."

But Canute spoke on: "What I expected that day was that you would come
to me, as friend comes to friend, and with my loose property I would
redeem from you every stick and stone which my kingship had forced me
to hold back. Not more than they have called me coward, have men ever
called me stingy--"

"And when have men called me greedy?" the Jotun bellowed. "Your thoughts
have got a bad habit of lying about me if they say that it was greed for
land which made me take your judgment angrily. Except for the honor of
my stock, what want I with land while I have a ship to bear me? I tell
you, now as heretofore, that it was your treachery which unsheathed a
sword between us."

"Rothgar my brother,--" the veil was rent from the King's face and
he had stepped from the dais and seized the other by the shoulders as
though he would wrestle bodily with him,--"by the Holy Ring, I swear
that I have never betrayed you! If you grudge not the land to the
Englishman, you have no cause to grudge him anything under Ymer's skull.
Can a man change his blood?--for so much a part of me is my friendship
for you. Time never was when it was not there, and it would be as
possible to fill my veins with Thames water as to put an Englishman into
your place. Can you not understand--"

But Rothgar's hand had fallen upon the other's breast and pushed him
backward so that he was forced to catch at the chair-arm to save himself
from falling. "Never get afraid about that," he sneered. "Since we slept
in one cradle, I have been a thick-headed Thrym and your Loke's wit has
fooled me into doing your bidding and fighting your battles and giving
you my toil and my limbs and my faith, but wisdom has grown in me at
last. You undertake too steep a climb when you try to make me believe in
your love while before my eyes you give to the man I hate my lands and
the woman you had promised me and my place above your men--" His rage
choked him so that he was obliged to break off and stand drawing his
sword from his sheath and slamming it back with a sharp sound. His voice
came back in a hoarse roar. "When I reckon up the debt against you, I
know that the only thing to wipe it out would be your life. Not taken
by poison nor underhandedly, but torn out of your deceitful body as we
stand face to face. If I could do that, it might be that my anger would
be quenched." Again h