.

"By Baldur," he gasped, "if it is not Oswald, in the flesh! What
witchcraft brought you here? To my certain knowledge there is no
ship but mine afloat now in the Severn Sea."

"Why, then, I crossed with you, friend," I said.

"That you did not--" he began, but stopped short.

"Thorgils, Thorgils--the sick man!" cried Nona.

"Oh!" said Thorgils, "can you have been Evan's charge?"

"Ay. Mind you that it was your own word that there might be danger
from the friends of Morgan?"

Then I told him all, and he heard with growls and head shakings,
which but for the presence of the lady might have been hard sayings
concerning my captors.

But when I ended he said:

"If ever I catch the said Evan there will be a reckoning. All the
worse it will be for him that for these five years past I have
known him, and deemed him a decent and trustworthy man, for a Welsh
trader. I have fetched him back and forth with his goods twice or
thrice a year for all that time, and now I suppose he has made me a
carrier of stolen wares! Plague on him. I mind me now that betimes
I have thought he dealt in cast-off garments somewhat, but that was
not my affair. Now one knows how that was."

"I liked the man well, also," said the princess, with a sigh. "He
has come here every year, and betimes as he shewed me his
goods--not those you spoke of, Thorgils--it has seemed to me that
he was downcast, and as one who had sorrow in his heart. Maybe he
had, for his ill doings. He deserves to be punished, but yet I
would ask that--that if you lay hands on him you will be merciful."

"He shewed little mercy to Oswald the thane," growled Thorgils.
"However, Princess, I think that you may be easy. He will not risk
aught, and we shall see him no more. But the knave would beguile
Loki. Never a word did I hear of any trouble, but he came and spoke
to me as I sat with your men yonder, and paid me his passage money,
and said he had asked for a guard for the ship as he wanted to be
away with the sick man. Also he said he would borrow the boat for
his easier passage ashore. I supposed she was smashed in the gale,
as she came not back, and Howel paid me for her when I grumbled."

"I wonder he went near you," I said.

"Therein was craft. If he had not paid passage I would have let
every shipmaster beware of him, and he would have fared ill. He
thought you done for, no doubt, and so fell back on certainty, as
one may say. It is a marvel you escaped the great