"Where is your father?"
"He, as well as my mother, are dead."
"He surely was not of the Northman race?"
"No, although he was born in their country, and always went to battle with them. He was of the Gallic race—"
"In what year did your father's father go to live among the Northmans?"
"Towards the middle of the last century."
"Was that not after a fresh and violent insurrection broke out in Brittany, when the Bretons, in order to make a head against the Franks, applied for aid from the Northmans, who happened to have their camp at the mouth of the Loire?"
"Yes," answered Gaëlo. "But how come you to know all that? Who told you of it?"
"What were the circumstances that induced your grandfather to join the Northmans?"
"After the fresh insurrection of Armorica, which at first bade fair to succeed, dissensions broke out among the Breton chiefs. Even my grandfather's family was divided. In the course of a violent altercation with one of his brothers, the two drew their swords. Wounded in that fratricidal duel, my grandfather left Brittany forever, and embarked with a troop of Northmans who were just then setting sail at the mouth of the Loire to return to Denmark, where my father and myself were born."