His laughter vanishing, the King came to earth in both senses of the phrase. “Now I do not know what you mean by that,” he said. “You were with me on the island. You heard what was said. You heard that we made peace together to last the whole of our lives, in truth, longer; since he who outlives is to inherit peacefully after him who dies. Did you not hear that?” Rothgar kicked a stone out of his way with impatient emphasis. “Oh, yes, I heard it. I heard also how you said that you would rather have the Englishman’s friendship than his kingdom.” The eyebrows Canute had drawn down into a frown rose ironically. “There is room in your breast for more sense, Rothgar, my brother, if you think, because I am forced into one lie, that I never speak the truth,” he said. “We will not talk of it further. I should like to remain good-humored to-night, if it were possible. What are the words you have waiting for my ears?” The Jotun’s sudden frown quite eclipsed his eyes. “It is not likely that I shall remain good-humored if I put my tongue to them. Oh! Now it becomes clear in my mind what you have sent your black-haired falcon down the wind after,—to carry your order to Northampton?” “Certainly it is,” Canute assented. “When the boy found that I had need of a messenger, he begged it of me as a boon that he might be the one to carry the good news to my lady. I thought it a well-mannered way to show his thankfulness. But why is your voice so bitter when you speak of him?” “Because I have just found out that he is a fox,” Rothgar bellowed. “Because it has been borne in upon me that he has played me a foul trick, by which I lost property that was already under my hands; lost it forever, Troll take him! if it be really true that we are to make no more warfare upon the lands south of the Watling Street.” “It is not possible!” Canute ejaculated. “He looks to be as truthful as Balder.” Rothgar uttered his favorite grunt. “Never did I hear that Loke had crooked eyes or a tusk, and black hair grows on both of them. I tell you, I know it for certain. I have just been to find the English serf who became my man after Brentford; and he has told me what he says he tried to tell the night before we left Ivarsdale, but no one would listen to him without pounding him,—that the servant-maid, who informed him concerning the provision house, spoke also of a Danish page her lord had, whom he treated with such great love that it was commonly said he was bewitched. And before that, when the brat was telling you how the Englishman had saved him from Norman’s sword, it occurred to me that he talked more as a woman talks of her lover than as a man speaks of his foe. I had my mouth open to tax him with it, when you threw this duel at me like a rock and knocked everything else out of my head.”