“Shall you pray yet again to the Asir, my husband?” she asked.

“Why should I?  I have vowed my vows, and there is an end.  If they heed them, all is well; and if not, the Norns hinder.”

“There is One whom the Norns hinder not at all,” she said gently, and so told him how that her prayers would go up every day.

Fain was she that he also prayed in that wise to her God, that naught might be apart in their minds.

Then he said, “I have heard this from David and Withelm also, and it is good.  Teach me to vow to your God, sweet wife, and I will do so; and you shall teach me to pray as you pray.”

So it came to pass that Havelok in the after days was more than ready to help the Christian teachers when they came to him; for that was how the vow that he made ran, that he would do so if he was king, and had the power.

Now there is nothing to tell of our voyage, for one could not wish for a better passage, if the ship was slow.  Indeed, she was so slow that a smaller vessel that left Tetney haven on the next day reached the same port that we were bound for on the night that we came to our old home.  And that we learned soon after she had come.

Into Sigurd’s haven we sailed on the morning tide, and strange it seemed to me to see the well-known place unchanged as we neared it.  My father’s house was there, and Arngeir’s, and the great hall of the jarl towered over all, as I remembered it.  Men were building a ship in the long shed where ours had been built, and where the queen had hidden; and the fishing boats lay on the hard as on the day when Havelok had come to us.  The little grove was yet behind our house, and it seemed strange when I remembered that the old stones of its altar were far beyond the seas.  I wondered if Thor yet stood under his great ash tree; and then I saw one change, for that tree was gone, and in its place stood a watchtower, stone built, and broad and high, for haven beacon.

On the high fore deck stood Havelok, and his arm was round Goldberga as we ran in, but they were silent.  The land held overmuch of coming wonder for them to put into words, as I think.

Presently the boats came off to us in the old way, and here and there I seemed to know the faces of the men, but I was not sure.  It was but the remembrance of the old Danish cast of face, maybe.  I could put no names to any of them.  And as we were warped alongside the wharf, there rode down to see who we were Sigurd the jarl himself, seeming unchanged, although twelve years had gone over him.  He was younger than my father, I think, and was at that age when a man changes too slowly for a boy to notice aught but that the one he left as a man he thought old is so yet.  He was just the noble-looking warrior that I had always wondered at and admired.