He raised from his hands now a face of boyish sullenness, and sat glaring over his clenched fists at his counsellors. “Certainly it would become a great misfortune to me if I should act against the advice of Rothgar Lodbroksson,” he made stinging answer. “He is as wise and long-sighted as though he had eaten a dragon’s heart. It was he who gave me the advice, when the English broke faith, to vent my rage upon the hostages. Men have not yet ceased to lift their noses at me for the unkingliness of the deed.” His eyes blazed at the memory. They were not pleasant eyes when he was angry; the blue seemed to fade from them until they were two shining colorless pools in his brown face. The son of Lodbrok shrugged his huge shoulders in stolid resignation; but the wrinkled forehead of the older man became somewhat smoother. There was nothing Jotun-like about his long, lean features, yet his expression was little pleasanter on that account. From under his lowering shaggy brows he appeared to see without being seen; and one distrusted his hidden eyes as a traveller in the open distrusts a skulker in the thicket. He said in his measured voice, “In that matter my opinion stands with Canute. When bloodshed is unnecessary, it becomes a drawback. Craft is greatly to be preferred. One does not cross deep snow by stamping through it on iron-shod feet; one slides over it on skees.” Over the brown fists, the fierce bright eyes bent themselves upon him in his turn. The biting young voice said, “It is likely that Thorkel the Tall speaks from experience. It stands in my memory how well craft served him when he had deserted my father for Ethelred and then became tired of the Englishman. To procure himself peace, he was forced to creep back to my feet like a dog that has been kicked. Was there gold enough in his bribe to regild his fame?” The gnarled old face of Thorkel the Tall grew livid; growling in his grizzled beard, his hand moved instinctively toward his sword. But Rothgar caught his arm with a boisterous laugh. “Slowly, old wolf!” he admonished. “Never snarl at the snapping of the cub you have raised.” The King had not moved at the threatening gesture, and he did not move now, but he echoed the laugh bitterly. “In that, you say more truth than you know, foster-brother. He is a wolf, and I am a wolf’s cub, and you are no better. We are all a pack of ravening beasts, we Northmen, that have no higher ambition than to claw and use our teeth. Talk of high-mindedness to such—bah!” He flung his arms apart in loathing; then, in a motion as boyishly weary as it was boyishly petulant, crossed them on the table before him and pillowed his head upon them.