After a last and tender embrace, Gaëlo and the Beautiful Shigne left the house of Eidiol. Their two _holkers_--one manned by the champions of Gaëlo, the other by the Buckler Maidens--awaited the couple at the port of St. Landry. With sails spread and swollen to the wind, the two light craft speedily descended the Seine and took the azure route of the swans across the billows of the northern sea. EPILOGUE I, Eidiol, wrote the preceding chronicle shortly after the departure of Gaëlo. I used the notes he left me in the matters that relate to his previous adventures, to the life of the Northman pirates and to the Buckler Maidens. The day after Gaëlo's departure I sailed to Rouen to meet my beloved Jeanike. With joy I embraced her two children, Yvonne and Germain the forester. After the tender pleasures of our first meeting Jeanike narrated to me her conversation with Ghisèle, the conversation of the latter with her father, and lastly the conversation of both with the Archbishop of Rouen at the castle of Compiegne. My daughter had overheard every word, and I have thus been enabled to reproduce with accuracy all the facts connected with the marriage of the pirate Rolf and Ghisèle, the ill-starred and now expiring daughter of King Charles. I finished this narrative to-day, the eleventh day of August, in the year 912, a happy day, because this morning I entrusted the fate of Anne the Sweet to Rustic the Gay. Alas, only my poor wife Martha was wanting to complete the joy at our hearth. THE END. FOOTNOTES: [1] "Often the fury of the Northmans was inspired less by their Odinic fanaticism than by the vengeance of the revolted slave and by the rage of the turn-coat"--Michelet, _History of France_, Vol. I, p. 395. [2] "During these disastrous times [the Northman wars] the serf became free, the free man became reduced to the estate of serf; they made a valet of the lord, and a lord of the valet."--Abbon, _Siege of Paris by the Northmans_, Vol. I, p. 5. Collected History of France. [3] See "The Branding Needle" and "The Abbatial Crosier," of this series. [4] For the career of the notorious Fredegonde, see "The Branding Needle," the seventh of this series. [5] Vortigern appears as one of the leading characters in "The Carlovingian Coins, or, The Daughters of Charlemagne," which immediately precedes the present work. [6] See the opening volume of this series, "The Gold Sickle." [7] See "The Poniard's Hilt," number six of the series. [8] Albinik, one of the sons of Joel, figures in the second volume of this series, "The Brass Bell."