to leave you to judge so great a matter.  It is your turn; trample under foot the ashes of the murderer!  Disdain the dust of him who slew his brother, and defiled his brother’s queen with infamous desecration, who outraged his sovereign and treasonably assailed his majesty, who brought the sharpest tyranny upon you, stole your freedom, and crowned fratricide with incest.  I have been the agent of this just vengeance; I have burned for this righteous retribution; uphold me with a high-born spirit; pay me the homage that you owe; warm me with your kindly looks.  It is I who have wiped off my country’s shame; I who have quenched my mother’s dishonour; I who have beaten back oppression; I who have put to death the murderer; I who have baffled the artful hand of my uncle with retorted arts.  Were he living, each new day would have multiplied his crimes.  I resented the wrong done to father and to fatherland:  I slew him who was governing you outrageously and more hardly than it beseemed men.  Acknowledge my service, honour my wit, give me the throne if I have earned it; for you have in me one who has done you a mighty service, and who is no degenerate heir to his father’s power; no fratricide, but the lawful successor to the throne; and a dutiful avenger of the crime of murder.  It is I who have stripped you of slavery, and clothed you with freedom; I have restored your height of fortune, and given you your glory back; I have deposed the despot and triumphed over the butcher.  In your hands is the reward; you know what I have done for you, and from your righteousness I ask my wage.”

Every heart had been moved while the young man thus spoke; he affected some to compassion, and some even to tears.  When the lamentation ceased, he was appointed king by prompt and general acclaim.  For one and all rested their greatest hopes on his wisdom, since he had devised the whole of such an achievement with the deepest cunning, and accomplished it with the most astonishing contrivance.  Many could have been seen marvelling how he had concealed so subtle a plan over so long a space of time.

After these deeds in Denmark, Amleth equipped three vessels, and went back to Britain to see his wife and her father.  He had also enrolled in his service the flower of the warriors, and arrayed them very choicely, wishing to have everything now magnificently appointed, even as of old he had always worn contemptible gear, and to change all his old devotion to poverty for outlay on luxury.  He also had a shield made for him, whereon the whole series of his exploits, beginning with his earliest youth, was painted in exquisite designs.  This he bore as a record of his deeds of prowess, and gained great increase of fame thereby.  Here were to be seen depicted the slaying of Horwendil; the fratricide and incest of Feng; the infamous uncle, the whimsical nephew; the shapes of the hooked stakes; the stepfather suspecting, the stepson dissembling; the various temptations offered, and the woman brought