"Whew! Virtues say you?" bawled the quarrelsome and half-drunken Dane. "Aye, marry! Saxons can preach you a homily with any shaveling priest in the land, or simper as chastely as any wench. Virtues! Ha, ha! Ho, ho! _Maugre!_ Virtues by the bushel, I warrant you, sirs. Marry, anything, in fact, but fight. Ha, ha! Virtues! Thou hast well said it, and aptly too, young suckling! If I were a Saxon I'd don my mother's petticoats." "Hear me, thane," retorted Oswald, repressing with great difficulty the rising choler. "You are our ally, and that shall be some excuse for your unseemly mouthing; but hark you to this for a moment. Your memory does not seem quite long enough to remember Battle-bridge and the precious figure cut by your countrymen on that occasion against the Saxon; and yet it is not more than four years agone. Hark you to this also, friend; I warrant you will find, ere this war be done, that Saxons can fight as bravely as any Dane that ever wielded sword." But the Dane persisted in his irritating and quarrelsome jesting. "Saxons fight?" he bawled, "Why, come, that is a joke, anyhow! I say, young Milkfed, tell me, if you can, what of this? How comes it to pass that either Norman or Dane, or even the tricky Scot, come when they list to crow on the Saxons' dunghill? How comes it also, my valiant Saxon cub, that you should ask us to come and help you fight this dog of a Norman? Read me that riddle, can you, boy? You besought us to come and help you, and here we are. I wish you joy of it. You'll be well rid when we go; for if we get not Norman booty, I warrant we will have Saxon, if we skin every Saxon churl in the island for it. What think you to that, young Sixfoot, eh?" The altercation seemed likely to develop into a serious quarrel, but at this juncture a Danish messenger crept slily into the room, and, nudging his leader's elbow, whispered something in his ear, at which he jumped to his feet and turned to his comrade, and between them a brief and excited conversation was carried on in an undertone; the result being that immediately the pair hurriedly withdrew from the room. Oswald, who had been watching these Danes with a suspicious eye, immediately turned to the leader, Waltheof; but he beheld with astonishment that the leader's chair was empty; Waltheof, amid the clamour of voices, having noiselessly slipped out of the room. "Ah, ah! what now?" he ejaculated, leaping to his feet and dragging his comrade Beowulf to the door. "There is something ominous in all this, Beowulf. It bodes no good to the Saxon cause, mark me." "What is it, think you, Oswald, that breeds this fear and distrust in the breasts of our leaders?"