No one turns from good,
if it can be got.
Hávamál.
Lying drowned in cool silence, the girl came slowly to a consciousness that someone was stooping over her. Raising her heavy lids, eyes rested on a man’s face, showing dimly in the dusk of the starlight.
He said in English, “Canute’s page, by the Saints!”
A chorus of voices answered him: “The fiend’s brat that pierced your shoulder?”—“Choke him!”—“Better he die now than after he has waxed large on English blood.”—“Finish him!”
Opening her eyes wider, she found that heads and shoulders made a black hedge around her.
The victim of her blade straightened, shaking his shaggy mane. “Were I a Pagan Dane, I would run my sword through him. But I am a Christian Englishman. Let him lie. He will bleed his life out before morning.”
“Come on, then,” the chorus growled. “The Etheling is asking what hinders us.”—“Make haste!”—“The Etheling is here!”
While the warrior was turning, a new voice spoke.
“Canute’s page?” it repeated after some unseen informant. “Is he dead?”
It was a young voice, and deep and soft, for all the note of quiet authority ringing through it; something in its tone was agreeably different from the harsh utterance of the first speaker. Randalin’s eyes rose dreamily to find the owner. He had ridden up behind the others on a prancing white horse. Above the black hedge, the square strength of his shoulders and the graceful lines of his helmed head were silhouetted sharply against the starry sky. Why had they so familiar a look? Ah! the noble who had followed Edmund—