“Ay, you have,” Mordred said grimly.  “One day it shall be what the worth of a British prince is in good cold steel, maybe.  Now let me have a messenger who shall take word to my people and bring back what is needed.”

He scowled when I mentioned Thorgils, but he knew him by repute at least, and was willing to trust him, as I would do so.  In the end, therefore, it was he who took the signet ring and the letter the prince had written and brought back the gold.  Some of the coins were of the days of Cunobelin, but the most of it was in bars and rings and chains, wrought for traffic by weight.

Now I will say at once that neither of my comrades would share in this ransom, though I thought that it was a matter between the three of us, as leaders of the force that day.

“Not I,” quoth Thorgils—­“the man was your own private captive, for you sent him down yourself.  What do I want with that pile of gold?  I have enough and to spare already, and I should only hoard it.  Or else I should just give it back to you for a wedding present by and by.  What?  Shaking your head?  Well, what becomes of all my songs if they end not in a wedding?  Have a care, Oswald, and see that you make up your mind in time.”

So he went away, laughing at me, but afterward I did make him promise that if he needed a new ship at any time he would tell me, so that I might give him one for the sake of the first voyage in the old vessel, and that pleased him well.

Now I told Ina this, being always accustomed to refer anything to him, and he was not surprised to hear that the Norseman would not take the gold.

“And if I may advise,” he said, “I would not offer a share to Erpwald; for, in the first place, he does not expect it, seeing that the captive is yours only, by all right of war; and in the next, he deems that you have already given him Eastdean, and he is not so far wrong.  So it would hurt him.  He will be all the happier now that he will know that you have withal to buy four Eastdeans, if you will.”

So against my will, as it were, that day made a rich man of me.  Presently I gave the wealth into the hand of Herewald the ealdorman, and he so managed it, being a great trader in his way, that it seemed to grow somewise, and I have a yearly sum therefrom in ways that are hard to be understood by me, but which seem simple enough to him.

I handed over Mordred to the Norsemen to keep until Thorgils returned with the ransom, for before we could rest with the sword in its scabbard again it was needful that all care should be taken for the holding of the new land we had won, and Ina would see to that himself.  Here and there we had fighting, but the Welsh never gathered again in force against us, and at last we held every town and camp from sea to sea along the line of the hills that run from Exmoor southwards, and there was our new border.

Jago went back to Exeter, seeing that his house was burnt at Norton with the rest of the town, and I heard afterwards that there he had found his wife, whom he had sent away when the certainty of war arose.  I was in no trouble for him, as he had houses elsewhere.