en. Is he home again?"

"Morgan is dead," I answered, feeling that here I had met with a
friend in all certainty. "And because of that, Owen is in his place
again, and I am here. It has all happened in this week, and to tell
you of it is to tell you all my trouble."

Now he was all impatience to hear, and I told him all that needed
to be told, until I came to the time when Owen was back at Norton
with the old king. Then he asked me some questions about matters
there, and in the midst of my answers sprang up.

"Why," he cried, "here I have forgotten the girl, and she ought to
be hearing all this, instead of sitting in the cold on the cliff.
She is Owen's goddaughter, moreover, and he was here only a little
time before he was banished. She can remember him well."

"Stay, though," he said, sitting down again. "There is your own
tale yet. Let us hear it. Maybe that is not altogether so
pleasant."

My own thought was that I was glad I might tell it without the
wondering eyes of the fair princess on me, being afraid in a sort
of way of having her think of me as the helpless sick man she had
pitied. So I hastened to tell all that story.

And when I came to the way in which Evan brought me, Howel's eyes
flashed savagely, and a black scowl came over his handsome face,
sudden as a thunderstorm in high summer.

"It will be a short shrift and a long rope for that Evan when I
catch him," he said. "He comes here every year, and I suppose that
the goods I have had from him at times have been plunder. I would
that you had ended him last night. Now he has got away in peace,
and is out of my reach, maybe, by this time. Well, how went it?"

Then I told him the end of the tale, wondering how it was that
Thorgils had let him go. I asked the prince if he could explain
that for me.

"Not altogether," he said. "Evan sent to me to ask me for men to
guard the ship presently, after we began the feast, saying that he
was going ashore with his goods, and was responsible to the
shipmaster. I told Thorgils, and he said it was well. So I sent a
guard, and presently Evan came and spoke with Thorgils for a little
while, and drank a cup of wine, and so went his way. Next morning,
before he sailed, Thorgils came and grumbled about the loss of his
boat, saying that Evan had taken some sick friend of his ashore in
her, and that she had not come back. I paid him for it too, because
I like the man, and so does my daughter. He sailed, and then I
h