In
the garden below, a minstrel was making hay in the sun of the royal glance by
a rapid improvising of flattering verses which he was shouting lustily to his
twanging harp, but now the King's hand rose curtly.
"Your imagination has no small power, friend, yet save some virtues in case
you should want to sing to me again," he advised as he tossed down a coin and
turned away.
His ward courtesied deeply before him. "For your justice, King Canute, I give
you thanks drawn from the bottom of my heart," she said.
"I welcome you to your own, Lady of Avalcomb," he answered as he returned her
salutation. Leaning against the window frame he stood a long while looking at
her in silence,--so long that she was startled when at last he spoke. "Yet for
the good of the realm, I must lay on your odal one burden, Frode's daughter."
"What is that, King?"
"It is that before the year is out you take a husband who shall be able to
defend your land in time of need."
Her white cheeks went very red before him and then grew very pale again, while
her breast rose and fell convulsively. But she clasped her hands over it as
though to still its protest and, suddenly, she flung up her head in a kind of
trembling defiance. "What does it matter? King, I know what a Danish woman
owes her race. Choose you the man and this shall, like other things, be as you
wish.
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