But he made no answer, save that he looked me in the face and smiled at me gravely and sweetly, and sheathed the sword he held, folding his arms thereafter as one whose work is done. And while one might count a score, I saw him, plainly as in life, and then he was gone.
Wherefore I thought that our own earl was not wroth with me for what I would do; and after that my mind was at rest, and ready to take what peace might come to me at the hands of Cnut the king.
"We have seen the earl," Thrand said, when he was gone.
"Aye. He tells us that the war is at an end, and that, in truth, Cnut is king in East Anglia."
"It is well," Thrand answered simply. "Dane were my fathers, and Danish is my name and that of Guthorm my brother. If Cnut lets us keep our old customs and governs with justice, it is all we need."
There was spoken the word of all Anglia, whether of the north or south folk, and I knew it. No man would but hail him there willingly. Our people had never forgotten that the Wessex kings were far from them, and that little help came from thence.
Now, when I came to Egil, I told him that the letter I had gotten bore messages to me from Eadmund, and I read it to him so far as I have written here.
"This is good," he answered, when I said that it should be as the king said. "Now are you Cnut's man and my friend indeed. Thorkel, my foster brother, is to be Earl of East Anglia, and you shall be Thane of Bures as ever. And I shall have to mind Colchester and this shore, and we shall see much of each other."
So he rejoiced, and I grew more cheerful as the days went on. Then Thorkel came, and together we went to Colchester, and thence he bade me go to Bures in peace and take my old place, for he said that Cnut and Emma the queen would have me honoured in all that I would, even did he himself not wish to keep me as his own friend.
Then said I: