"I said not that there was a thane." she said at once.
"Nay, mother; but you denied it not. Come now; I think what I can tell you will save you trouble."
She thought for a little, weighing somewhat in her mind, as it seemed, and then she chose to add to her store of witchcraft.
"Yonder, then," she said, nodding to the dense alder thickets that hid the river Tone from us, across a stretch of frozen mere or flooded land. "I wot well that he who bides in Denewulf's cottage is a thane, for he wears a gold ring, and wipes his hands in the middle of the towel, and sits all day studying and troubling in his mind in such wise that he is no good to any one--not even turning a loaf that burns on the hearth before his eyes. Ay, they call him Godred."
Then my heart leaped up with gladness, and I turned to seek Heregar; but he was coming, and so I waited. Then the dame clamoured for her reward, which Harek had as nearly forgotten as had I.
"Mother," the scald said gravely, "when I work a spell with hammer and nail, the footprint into which the nail is driven is of her who cast the evil eye on me."
"Why, so it should be."
"Nay, but you drive it into your own," he said.
She looked, and then looked again. Then she stamped a new print alongside the nailed one, and it was true. She had paid no heed to the matter in her fury, and when she knew that she turned pale.
"Man," she cried, "help me out of this. I fear that I have even nailed the evil overlooking fast to myself."