“It will be good to think of you two together—­”

“In the place you have given us,” she broke in on me.  “Love and a home for all my life!  What more could your vow have wrought than that?  Let me go, Oswald, or I shall weep.  It was a good day that sent you to be my champion.”

Then she stepped swiftly to me and kissed me once, and fled, and I do not mind saying that I was glad that she had gone.  Too much thanks for things that had been done more or less by chance, and as they came to hand as it were, without any special thought for any one, are apt to make one feel discomforted.

The wedding on the morrow I have no skill to tell of, but as every one has seen such a thing, that hardly matters.  I will only set down that never had I seen such a bright one, or so good a company, there being all the more guests present because many who came to the levies stayed on to do honour to the ealdorman and his daughter.  Elfrida looked all that a bride should, as I thought, and also as the queen said in my hearing, so that I think I cannot be wrong.  I gave her Gerent’s great gold armlet, having caused it to be wrought into such a circlet for her hair as any thane’s wife might be well pleased to wear.

As for Erpwald, he was dazed and speechless with it all, but none heeded him, though indeed he made a gallant groom, for that is the usual way as regards the bridegroom at such times.  Which is perhaps all the more comfortable for him.

Then was pleasant feasting, and after it some of us who had been Erpwald’s closer friends here rode a little way with those two wedded ones on the first stage of their homeward journey.  The Sussex thanes and their men were with them as guard, and they rode on ahead and left us to take our leave.

And by and by, after a mile or two, the rest turned back with gay farewells, and left me alone with the two, for they knew that I was their nearest friend, and would let me be the last to speak with them.  We had not much to say, indeed, but there are thoughts, and most of all, good wishes, that can be best read without words.

“There is but one thing that I wish,” Elfrida said at the very last, even when I had turned my horse and was leaving them.

“What is that?” I asked, seeing that there was some little jest coming.

“Only, that I had seen the Princess Nona.”

I laughed, and so they were gone, and I went back to Glastonbury, wondering if Elfrida guessed what my thoughts of that lady might be.  I had not said much of her to any one, except as one must speak of people with whom one has been for a while.

Strangely enough had come to pass that which I vowed to do for Elfrida, though not in the way which had been in my mind when I drank the Bragi bowl.  Presently, when I came back to the ealdorman’s house, I had to put up with some old jests concerning that vow, which seemed to others to have come to naught, but they did not hurt me.