"
"It is not possible!" Canute ejaculated. "He looks to be as truthful as
Balder."
Rothgar uttered his favorite grunt. "Never did I hear that Loke had crooked
eyes or a tusk, and black hair grows on both of them. I tell you, I know it
for certain. I have just been to find the English serf who became my man after
Brentford; and he has told me what he says he tried to tell the night before
we left Ivarsdale, but no one would listen to him without pounding him,--that
the servant-maid, who informed him concerning the provision house, spoke also
of a Danish page her lord had, whom he treated with such great love that it
was commonly said he was bewitched. And before that, when the brat was telling
you how the Englishman had saved him from Norman's sword, it occurred to me
that he talked more as a woman talks of her lover than as a man speaks of his
foe. I had my mouth open to tax him with it, when you threw this duel at me
like a rock and knocked everything else out of my head."
"May the gallows take my body!" the King breathed. And he sat down upon a
grassy hummock as suddenly as though a rock had been thrown at him that
knocked the legs from under him. Nor did he get up immediately, but remained
gazing at the string of bright beads which English camp-fires made along the
opposite bluff, his face intent with pondering.
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