"The king hath stopped the ferries on account of the archbishop," answered the stranger. "Every man knows Grand hath escaped hence by sea, and yet the stupid dullards hunt after him here, both by day and night. Not a cat can leave the country, and there is now hardly a wood or morass left where a friend of the pious archbishop may hide himself. I see you take me for a deserter. It avails not to withhold the truth from you. I am a persecuted man; save my life, and bring me to a sea port from whence I may escape; I will richly repay you for it."
"Well!" said the old man, and his stern look relaxed. "No doubt an honest man may get into trouble, as hath chanced ere now; he is often forced to quit the country in disguise who afterwards can return with honour. The wind is fair, my yawl will weather the trip bravely; but I must first know who you are, and wherefore you are outlawed?"
"Outlawed!" repeated the stranger, with a start; "who says I am outlawed, with law and justice, because I fly from lawlessness and shameful injustice? I am a kinsman of the great Archbishop Grand, whom they have here so shamefully and unjustly maltreated. If I would not expose myself to the same tyrannical treatment, from which our Lord and pious men have freed him, I am now forced to seek safety by flight."
"But your name?" resumed the fisherman, as he suddenly placed the oar against a stone, and pushed the boat out to sea, with such force that both the stranger and the astonished young fisherman tumbled over the bench. "You will not call yourself outlawed, then?" he continued calmly, while the stranger stood up, and cast an anxious look on the wide space between the boat and the shore. "I should incline to think ye were so, nevertheless. Are ye not called, because of a little mistake, Squire Kaggé with the scar? Were ye one of those who slew the king's father in Finnerup barn? and if it be you who lately sought to take the king's life, I should be a rascal if I stirred a hand to bring you to any other free port than the gallows."
The stranger's countenance had become fearfully distorted; he thrust his hand as if convulsively under his cloak, and drew forth a long glittering knight's sword. "You must either set me instantly on shore here, or bring me to Skanör harbour; no matter who the devil I may be," he cried. "The squire whom Denmark's greatest man dubbed a knight lets himself not be carried to market with cod and flounders by a vile fisherman."
"Big words and fat flesh stick not in the throat," answered Jeppé, quietly brandishing the heavy iron-tagged oar like a lance over his head. "Here I stand on my own ground, and here I am master. Cast your dyrendal[[15]] from you, Sir Malapert! or you shall feel one upon your skull which will make you forget the stroke of knighthood you got from the greatest man. If that man be Stig Anderson,"--he added, "you need not mention your fair name or your fair deed--for in that case you were as certainly with Marsk Stig and the grey friars in Finnerup barn as you are now with Jeppé the fisherman on the road to judgment and the gallows."
"We shall see," shouted the stranger, like a madman, and rushed on him with his drawn sword, but at the same moment he fell back senseless in the boat, while the hat flew from his head before a stroke of Jeppé's iron-tagged oar.
"Take the dyrendal from him, and bind him, Olé, while I loose the sails," said the old fisherman calmly, as he threw down the oar, and began to unfurl the sails. "That blow he dies not of. If the king will give him his life, that's his affair; but none shall say that old Jeppé the fisherman sided with such like outlaws, and let a regicide slip whole skinned from Gilleleié."
The young fisherman obeyed his master. The sails were soon unfurled, and the fishing yawl sailed swiftly along the coast.
Jeppé was not mistaken. His captive was the renowned Aagé Kaggé who had been outlawed with all those who had taken a personal share in the murder of Eric Glipping. He had entered the service of the King of Norway, but had ventured to Denmark to bring Marsk Stig's daughters from thence; and also, as it appeared, with other less peaceable intentions. That he had been a party to the murderous attack of the crazed Jutlander upon the king the Drost's huntsmen had borne witness, and there seemed also every probability that it was he who had attempted the assassination of Drost Aagé, as he was riding with Marsk Stig's daughters into the gate of Vordingborg castle. Every burgomaster and all commandants of castles throughout the country had received orders to trace and to seize him, wherever he was found. As an outlaw, besides, every one who met and knew him was empowered to slay him on the spot. Although in general he, like all those outlawed regicides, was held in great detestation, there was still one heart which throbbed for him with love and sympathy,--the wayward, restless heart of the captive Lady Ulrica.