Perhaps her gaze was not quite clear as she crossed the room, for she did not see that the door-curtains were moving until she was close upon them, when they were thrust apart to admit the form of Rothgar Lodbroksson. Stifling a gasp, she shrank behind a tall chair. He did not see her, however, for his eyes were fastened upon the King, who had turned back to the window. He had cast aside the splendor of the royal guards, wearing over his steel shirt a kirtle of blue that made his florid face seem redder and gave to his fiery hair a hotter glow. Two sentinels carrying shining pikes had followed him in, uncertainly, and now one plucked at his arm. But the Jotun shook him off to stride forward, clanking his heels with intentional noisiness upon the stone floor. At the clatter the King looked around, and the tone in which he spoke his friend’s name had in it more of passion than all the lover’s phrases he had ever paid Elfgiva’s ears. At the same time, he made a sharp sign to the two sentinels. “Get back to your posts,” he said. Hesitating they saluted and unwilling they wheeled, while one spoke bluntly over his shoulder. “It would be better to let us stay, King, if you please. You are weaponless.” “Go,” Canute repeated. In a moment the doors beyond the curtain had closed behind them, and the two men were alone save for the girl hiding forgotten in the shadow of the chair. Rothgar laughed jarringly. “Whatever has been told about you, you have not yet been accounted a coward. But I do not see how you know I shall not kill you. I have dreamed of it not a few times.” Something like a veil seemed to fall over the King’s face; from behind it he spoke slowly as he moved away to the dais upon which his throne-chair stood, and mounted the steps. “The same dream has come to me, but never has it occurred to me to seek you out to tell you of it.” “No such purpose had I,” the Jotun said with a touch of surliness. Pulling a bag from under his belt, he shook out of it upon the floor a mane of matted yellow hair. “If you want to know my errand, it is to bring you this. Yesterday it came to my ears that one of my men was suspected of having tried to give you poison through your wife’s British thrall. I got them before me and questioned them, and the Scar-Cheek boasted of having done it. This is his hair. If you remember anything about the fellow, you understand that he was not alive when I took it from him.” The King looked immovably at the yellow mass. “You have behaved in a chieftain-like way and I thank you for it,” he said. “But I would have liked it better if you had come to me about the judgment that raised this wall between us—” Rothgar’s throat gave out a savage sound. “Tempt me not! I am no sluggish wolf.”