By obeying me in this,
you will give the State help where it is most needed and hard to get." When
that was out, he raised his head and met the Etheling's eyes squarely, and it
was plain to each of them that the moment had come which must, once and
forever, decide their future relations.
It was a long time that the Lord of Ivarsdale stood there, the pride of his
rank, and the prejudice of his blood, struggling with his new convictions, his
new loyalty. But at last he took his eyes from the King's to bow before him in
noble submission.
"This is not the way of fighting that I am used to, King Canute," he said,
"and I will not deny that I had rather you had set me any other task; but
neither can I deny that, since you find you have need of my wits rather than
of my sword, it is with my wits that it behooves me to serve you. Tell me
clearly what is your command, and neither haughtiness nor self-will shall
hinder me from fulfilling it."
Chapter XXVIII
When Love Meets Love
Rejoiced at evil
Be thou never,
But let good give thee pleasure.
Ha'vama'l.
Before the time of the Confessor, the West Minster was little more than the
Monastery chapel, in which the presence of the parish folk, if not forbidden,
was still in no way encouraged. To-day, when the Lord of Ivarsdale came
unnoticed into the dim light while the last strains of the vesper service were
rising, there were no more than a score of worshippers scattered through the
north aisle,--a handful of women, wives of the Abbot's military tenants, a
trader bound for the land beyond the ford, a couple of yeomen and a hollow-
eyed pilgrim, drifting with the current of his unsteady mind.
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