"Cut him loose," he said.
They did so.
He looked mournfully yet sternly on the youth, who himself trembled all over with emotion.
"Alfgar," he said, "do I indeed see my son?"
"You do, my father."
"Follow me; nay, you are wounded--lean on my arm."
Alfgar's thigh had, it will be remembered, been pierced by an arrow, but the wound was not deep, and with his father's assistance he could proceed. He knew where Anlaf led. At length they came upon a deserted clearing, and there he paused until Alfgar, who could scarcely keep up, stood by his side.
Before them the moonbeams fell upon a dark charred mass of ruins in the centre of the space.
"This is the spot where father and son should meet again," said Anlaf and he embraced his son.