“Villain!” groaned Dirk as he lay on the ground.  “It was I who was to give the buffet, not thou!”

“Art mad?” said Hereward, as he coolly picked up the coins which Dirk had scattered in his fall.  “It is the seller’s business to take, and the buyer’s to give.”

In Holland Hereward remained a year, but as, under the terms of a wager made in a boastful mood, he went through the campaign without any armour and without changing his clothes, it was a disreputable looking man with many a wound who returned to Bruges, where, at the court of Adela, a jest was played on Torfrida by the countess, not without the privity of Hereward.

For before all her ladies Adela took her to task for having so long remained unmarried.  Then, forming the assembly into a court of love, she asked the ladies what punishment should be meted out.  One said one thing, one another.

“Marry her to a fool,” said Richilda.

“Too common a misfortune,” said the Lady of France.  “No,” said she.  “We will marry her to the first man who enters the castle.”

And from her sentence there was no appeal.  Married poor Torfrida must be, and to the first man who happened in, be he who he might.  And the first man was a ragged beggarman, with whom, when he was introduced into the presence, Torfrida was preparing to deal in her own way with a little knife, be the cost what it might, when she recognised the eye of grey and the eye of blue.

II.—­Hereward Encounters Some Old Friends

In the spring it was hey for the war again, whence Hereward returned in November to find himself the father of a daughter and the recipient of letters from Harold of England and William of Normandy, both asking his assistance.  Regarding Harold as a usurper, Hereward bluntly told him so.  To William his reply was equally decisive, but less uncompromising.  “When William is King of all England, Hereward will put his hands between his and be his man.”

Whereat William laughed.  “It is a fair challenge from a valiant man,” he said to the messenger.  “The day shall come when I shall claim it.”

In Bruges one day Hereward found Gilbert of Ghent, who for reasons of his own had come thither with his ward Alftruda, and mightily disappointed was Gilbert to find him married; for he had a scheme whereby Hereward should marry Alftruda, and he should share her dowry, which was great.  Alftruda, too, was mightily displeased, as she seemed one whom Hereward thought the most beautiful he had ever beheld; indeed, for one moment he even forgot Torfrida, and gazed at her spellbound.  The only remark she vouchsafed to her former preserver was a whispered “So you could not wait for me,” and then passed on to marry Dolfin, Gospatric’s eldest son; and Gilbert pursued his way to France to join the Norman.

After that news came thick and fast.

News of Harold Hardraada sailing to England with a mighty host, of how the Gonfanon of St. Peter had come to Rouen, of William of Normandy’s preparations at St. Pierre sur Dive, of the Norsemen landing in the Humber.  Anon the news of Stamford Bridge and Hardraada’s death, and lastly news of Senlac, and the death of the other Harold.