"Why," he cried, "here I have forgotten the girl, and she ought to be hearing all this, instead of sitting in the cold on the cliff. She is Owen's goddaughter, moreover, and he was here only a little time before he was banished. She can remember him well."
"Stay, though," he said, sitting down again. "There is your own tale yet. Let us hear it. Maybe that is not altogether so pleasant."
My own thought was that I was glad I might tell it without the wondering eyes of the fair princess on me, being afraid in a sort of way of having her think of me as the helpless sick man she had pitied. So I hastened to tell all that story.
And when I came to the way in which Evan brought me, Howel's eyes flashed savagely, and a black scowl came over his handsome face, sudden as a thunderstorm in high summer.
"It will be a short shrift and a long rope for that Evan when I catch him," he said. "He comes here every year, and I suppose that the goods I have had from him at times have been plunder. I would that you had ended him last night. Now he has got away in peace, and is out of my reach, maybe, by this time. Well, how went it?"
Then I told him the end of the tale, wondering how it was that Thorgils had let him go. I asked the prince if he could explain that for me.
"Not altogether," he said. "Evan sent to me to ask me for men to guard the ship presently, after we began the feast, saying that he was going ashore with his goods, and was responsible to the shipmaster. I told Thorgils, and he said it was well. So I sent a guard, and presently Evan came and spoke with Thorgils for a little while, and drank a cup of wine, and so went his way. Next morning, before he sailed, Thorgils came and grumbled about the loss of his boat, saying that Evan had taken some sick friend of his ashore in her, and that she had not come back. I paid him for it too, because I like the man, and so does my daughter. He sailed, and then I heard of the fight for the first time."
Howel laughed a little to himself.
"Master Evan must have paid my rascals well to keep up the story of the sick man to Thorgils, for he said nothing to me of any fight. Maybe, however, he never spoke to any of them, and it is likely that they would not say much to him. And now, by the Round Table! if you are not the mad Norseman they prated of to me when I wanted to know who slew the two men, and if you are not the sick man that Nona is so anxious about! Here, she must come and see you!"
With that he got up and went to the door before I could stay him, and called gaily to the princess, whose horse I could hear stamping high above us.