"I would be cut to pieces with the ploughshare for her."
"You plucked me by the cloak when you made your report in the presence of the Adeling and the old woman. You wished to tell me something that they ought not to know."
"That is true, great Father! How did you discover--?"
"That was not hard to guess. But I suspect more--the girl did not become the captive of the kindhearted chatterer, Ausonius, but of another Roman."
The slave looked up at him in fright. "Did your Odin, your terrible god who knows all things, reveal this to you?"
"No, he only gave me the power of reading men's eyes. So she is another's prisoner; I suspected it. And you did not wish to plunge into still deeper grief both the old grandmother and the Adeling; for he loves the child ardently."
"You know that too?"
"One doesn't need Odin's assistance for it," replied the Duke, smiling. "I was young once too. You wished to spare the youth?"
"Yes, great Father. He would wear himself out with rage and grief. Yet he can do nothing to save her."
"He would only destroy himself, and perhaps our best hope of victory, by some desperate deed. I am pleased with you, slave. Keep silence as before. But Ausonius was there too?"