faggot into the face of his nearest foe, and struck the traitor Edmund to the earth with his axe. Osric and Thorkill then rushed upon him, but the one, Thorkill, was much hurt with the faggot thrust, and, calling out for his men, fell back into the fire, while Osric, not being able to reach Feargus, owing to the length of his weapon, in trying to avoid it was caught about the middle and wounded. Feargus paused to pluck the body of Thorkill from the fire and then dashed headlong at the soldiers. These seeing one clad in skins and all afire coming to meet them, turned and fled. “Alack!” said Feargus, as he freed himself from his hairy covering, “alack for so much slaughter. Gladly would I have spared thee, Thorkill, for methinks thou wert gentler than thy deeds, but he that herds with traitors must fare with them also.” And so saying he laid the two bodies and the wounded man side by side in a row for Osbert. CHAPTER XVII THE WAY TO ALBAN Feargus took his way home with a heavy heart. “Of a surety they will yet compass my death,” said he. “The king wots well of this thing, and it is unworthy of the Sigmund, who fought against Penda for Christ. Penda the heathen would have scorned such like traitorous work. Woe is me for the house of Sigmund, for ruin is before it, whether I be slain or not, and were I to kill the thane, as I have his brother, then would his kill come against us if they do not now, and without warriors I could do little.” So he reached Torfrida’s hall and lay under the lintel but slept not. And when Osbert, passing in the morning, saw the Pict still alive, terror seized him, and Feargus eyed him sternly and spoke. “If thou wilt turn thy face eastward towards the fens to the hall of Edmund thy servant, thou wilt find the thane with two of thine own kin awaiting thee.” Then Osbert rode on northward up the brae that made the centre of the town, and as soon as he was out of sight of Feargus he looked and saw smoke issuing from the hall of Edmund. With sore misgivings he turned his beast eastward. When he reached Edmund’s land he found a few blackened timbers standing, and those two lying on the green sward stark dead and the wounded beside them. That day Feargus went and told Torfrida of the trap that had been set for him, and her fear was great lest they should slay him, and he asked her again to fly, but yet she would not. “Then, Torfrida, thou wilt come with me and take Edwy’s counsel,” and she was not unwilling. So they sent a messenger that day to Edwy, and the next they hied them together in the early morn and found him in the forest. And when he knew of the burning of Edmund’s hall, “Surely,” he said, “my father hath a knowledge of this thing. He must be in his dotage, and in his old age is doing that which in his youth he would have scorned. It seemeth to me that ye must fly together, and the sooner the safer, for the thane will not long leave his kin unavenged.” “Now, Torfrida, hearken ye to Edwy’s rede.”