It seemed to Gard that he had never seen so great a change in any one. From the unkempt brown hair to the black cloak that hung about his heels in rusty rags, he was as different from what he had been as November from June. His face showed the change most of all, for no glow of red was left in the brown, and his eyes were like cinders out of which the fire had died. From Gard's throat there burst suddenly a dry sob; and before the Swordless could move, his one-time follower was kneeling before him, clutching at his tattered cloak.
"Alrek! Come back and let me make it up to you. I can not sleep at night with thinking what I brought upon you. I beg you to come back!"
When he had stood a while looking down at him, Alrek spoke with suppressed scorn: "Are you still trying to spend your money and keep it too? You do not want to bear the burden of your deed, yet you knew when you slew him that some one must suffer for it——"
"I slay him? I did not! I did not! I only told that lie——"
"So that I repeated it and became also a liar. I would not believe you though you swore with your hand on the Boar's head. You tried to take back the weapon which Brand gave, and the Skraelling resisted and you struck—with my hatchet which you had found where it dropped when I fell. I tell you I would not believe you though you took oath on the Cross. Let go my cloak and get away from me. If you had more than a dog's wit you would know better than to talk of making it up to me; you would know that I am disgraced forever. Let go my cloak before I kick you away as I would a dog." Freeing himself, he was gone. Gard reached the door only in time to see him pass out of the gate, Domar eagerly saluting; then the forest took him again into its silent keeping.
Thrusting his hands through his belt, the Ugly One leaned against the casing and spoke heavily to the hound that had left a noonday nap to come and fawn upon him. "It is likely that we have low minds as he says, Fafnir.... Yet, for all he says, we are faithful.... We do not lay it up against a friend if it happen that he ill-use us...." Seeing the bristles begin suddenly to rise along the hound's spine, he looked up to find Thorhall the Huntsman swinging past over the grass. He finished with a sound very like the one coming from the dog's great throat: "And both of us can tell a foe when we see him!"