Maybe there were one or two of the rougher men who held their peace, for they had had more than their share of work, but from the rest came a shout of “Ay!” as it were at the Witan.
“Well, then,” said Havelok suddenly, getting down from his seat and giving his loaf to the old man, “see you to it; and if any give trouble hereafter, I shall hear from the cook, and, by Odin, I will even come down and knock their heads together for them. So farewell.”
He smiled round pleasantly, yet in that way which has a meaning at the back of it; and at that every cap went off and the men did him reverence as to a thane at least, and he nodded to them and came across to me.
“Come out into the fields, brother, for I shall weep if I bide here longer.”
So he said; and we went away quickly, while the men gathered round the old leader who was to be, and talked earnestly.
“This famine plays strange tricks with me,” he said when we were away from every one. “Did you hear all that I said?”
“I heard all, and you have spoken the best thing that could have been said. Eight years have I been to this market, and a porters’ guild is just what is needed. And it will come about now.”
“It was more dreaming, and so I must be a wise man in my dream. Even as in the palace yesterday it came on me, and I seemed to be at the gate of a great hall, and it was someone else that was speaking, and yet myself. It is in my mind that I told these knaves what my lordly will was, forsooth; and the words came to me in our old Danish tongue, so that it was hard not to use it. But it seems to me that long ago I did these things, or saw them, I know not which, somewhere. Tell me, did the king live in our town across the sea?”
“No, but in another some way off. My father took me there once or twice.”
“Can you mind that he took me also?”