One stormy day when the waves dashed and foamed up the shingly beach, and the sea and sky were a leaden grey, the fisher-folk who lived down by the shore saw a small boat, with tattered sails and broken mast, being driven before the wind. There seemed to be a man in it, but he was evidently weak and exhausted, and was doing nothing to help himself. Presently the boat was thrown up on the shore, and the fishermen ran down and collected in a little crowd round it. Looking down at the helpless man, still clinging to a spar and drenched with foam and sea-water, they soon saw he was not one of their people. "A Dane, a Dane!" they murmured with sullen hate. Then one who had served in St. Edmund's army suddenly gave a wild exclamation. "By Heaven," he said, "it's Lothparch!" Lothparch was the leader of the Danish army who had done such awful harm to East Anglia only a few years before. "Kill him!" growled one man. "Throw him back on the mercy of the sea!" hissed another. But the man who had fought under St. Edmund would have nothing of the kind. The King never allowed a helpless man, even a cruel enemy, to be killed. So Lothparch was carried up to the royal palace. To the surprise of the fierce Angles, St. Edmund not only made the stranger welcome, but showed him every kindness. "Love your enemies," said Our Lord, and sure enough St. Edmund seemed truly to be obeying that command. Everything the King did seemed right to his loyal subjects; but there was one man--Berne, the King's huntsman--whose jealousy was so bitter at St. Edmund's showing favour to a Dane that he waited till he had an opportunity, and then he murdered Lothparch. The King was very angry, of course; but he said that, though Berne deserved to die for the crime, he would give him a faint chance of escape; he should be put in an open boat, and pushed out to sea and left to the mercy of the waves. After tossing for many days, Berne was washed up on a strange coast. During those lonely days of tossing on the waves, instead of repenting of his crime, Berne's wicked heart had been full of hatred for the King. So when he heard that the land he had come to was Lothparch's own kingdom, and that his two sons, Inguar and Hubba, were reigning in his place, a horrible idea came into his mind. Asking to be taken before the Princes, he made up and told them an awful lie, saying that when their father, Lothparch, had been washed up, helpless, on the coast of England, Edmund the King had caused him to be cruelly put to death. Of course, this enraged Inguar and Hubba, and they at once collected a huge and fierce army, and set out once more for East Anglia. _A Fight to the Death._