the
young prince on the throne, but did not wish to do anything the people
might not like. Ulf, deceived by her story, had the boy crowned king, and
thereby won Canute's ill-will.

The king, however, showed no signs of this, nor of resentment against Ulf
for his rebellion, but, after his escape from the Swedes, asked the earl
to go with him to his palace at Roeskilde, and on the evening of their
arrival offered to play chess with him. During the game Canute made a
false move so that Ulf was able to take one of his knights, and when the
king refused to let this move count and wanted his man back again the
earl jumped up and said he would not go on with the game. Canute, in a
burst of anger, cried out:

"The coward Norwegian Ulf Jarl is running away."

"You and your coward Danes would have run away still faster at the
Helge-aae if I and my Norwegians had not saved you from the Swedes, who
were making ready to beat you all like a pack of craven hounds!"
ejaculated the angry earl.

Those hasty words cost Ulf his life. Canute, furious at the insult,
brooded over it all night, and the next morning, still in a rage, called
to one of the guards at the door of his bed-chamber:

"Go and kill Ulf Jarl."

"My Lord King, I dare not," answered the man. "Ulf Jarl is at prayer
before the altar of the church of St. Lucius."

The king, after a moment's pause, turned to a young man-at-arms who had
been in his service since his boyhood and cried angrily:

"I command you, Olaf, to go to the church and thrust your sword through
the Jarl's body."

Olaf obeyed, and Ulf was slain while kneeling before the altar rails of
St. Lucius' church.

Then, as usual with King Canute, his passion cooled and he deeply
lamented his crime, showing signs of bitter remorse. In way of expiation
he paid to his sister Estrid, Ulf's widow, a large sum as blood-fine, and
gave her two villages which she left at her death to the church in which
her husband had been slain. He also brought up Ulf's eldest son as one of
his own children. The widowed Estrid afterwards married Robert, Duke of
Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, who in 1066 became master of
England.

King Canute died in 1035, at thirty-six years of age, and his son Harald
reigned after him in England for four years, and afterwards his son
Harthaknud, or Hardicanute, for three years, when England again came
under an Anglo-Saxon king--to fall under the power of William of
Normandy, a con