Turning from a muttered word to the soldier at his side, Thorkel answered her with his usual curtness. “He thrives well, but his time is full of great matters. To-day he is with the English Witan. Yesterday they chose him to be their king. To-morrow he is to be crowned.” “To-morrow? And he would have let me remain in ignorance!” The Lady of Northampton was unable to repress a start of anger, though she turned it as soon as possible into a plaintive sigh. “Let me be thankful that my arrival is not too late. I cannot tell you how we have been beset with hardships!” Whereupon, she instantly began telling him, giving free rein to eyes and lips and all the graceful tricks of her hands. It did not disturb her in the least that he rode beside her in silence, when she had observed that from under the bristling thatch of his brows his gaze never left her face. So complete was her preoccupation that she dis-regarded another thing,—the highway along which they were travelling. It was Randalin who first awoke to a consciousness that the noise of the rabble had become very faint behind them, that no sounds at all broke the stillness ahead of them, that the uneven weed-grown path they were treading was very different from the smooth hardness of the Watling Street. Fens on either side of them, a low hill to the front—was this the way to London? For the first time, she spoke to the son of Lodbrok, who had silently taken his place at her side. “This is not the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned—Where are we?” Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were difficult to frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who had caught the exclamation, had broken off her prattle. “That is true! The crowd has disappeared—the stones are overlaid with weeds—” In her bewilderment, she reined in her horse and would have stopped to look about her, if Thorkel’s hand upon her bridle had not compelled her to remain in motion. “You are still on the Watling Street,” he said harshly. “It is only that this is the old bed of it that has not been used much since the Bridge was built. Besides the ford, it leads also to Saint Peter’s Monastery on Thorney—” Stung with fear, she tried to snatch the lines from him. “I am not going to a monastery! I am going to the Palace.” As a cliff stands against the fretting of waves, his grasp stood against hers; and his voice was as immovable as his hand. “Certainly you are going to a palace, you did not let me carry out my meaning. Adjoining the Monastery there is a dwelling-place which was once a house for travellers, that King Edgar himself has slept in—” “It is a prison you are taking me to!” Her voice rose in a shriek. “It is a prison! You are mocking me I will scream for help!” His smile mocked her openly then. “By all means,”—he assented,—“and see how much it will profit you.”