I went to the hall again, and found him easily enough, for all men were looking at him.  He was in the midst of the hall, juggling in marvellous wise with a heavy woodman’s axe, which he played with as if it were a straw for lightness.  Even as I entered from the door on the high place he was whirling it for a mighty stroke which seemed meant to cleave a horn cup which he had set on a stool before him, and I wondered.  But he stayed the stroke as suddenly as if his great arms had been turned to steel, so that the axe edge rested on the rim of the vessel without so much as notching it, and at that all the onlookers cheered him.

“Now it may be known,” said he, smiling broadly, “why men call me Thorgils the axeman.”

Then he threw the unhandy weapon into the air whirling, and caught it as it came to hand again, so that it balanced on his palm, and so he held it as I went to him, and told him the king would speak with him.

Whereon he threw the axe at the doorpost, so that it stuck there, and laughed at the new shout of applause, and so turned down his sleeves and bade me lead him where I would.

He made a stiff, outlandish salute as he stood before Ina, and the king returned it.

“I have sent for you now, friend, rather than wait for morning,” he said, “for it seems to me that we have business that must be seen to with the first light.  Will you tell us what you know of this man who has been slain?  I think you are no Welshman of Cornwall.”

“I am Thorgils the Norseman of Watchet, king,” he answered.  “Thorgils the axeman, men call me, by reason, of some skill with that weapon which your folk seem to hold in no repute, which is a pity.  Shipmaster am I by trade, and I am here to seek for cargo, that I may make one more voyage this winter with the more profit, having to cross to Dyfed, beyond the narrow sea, though it is late in the year.”

“I thought you might be a Dane from Tenby.”

“The Welsh folk know the difference between us by this time,” Thorgils said, with a little laugh.  “They call them ‘black heathen’ and us ‘white heathen,’ though I don’t know that they love us better than they do them.  By grace of Gerent the king, to be politic, or by grace of axe play, to speak the truth, we have a little port of our own here on this side the water, at the end of the Quantocks, where we seek to bide peaceably with all men as traders.”

“Ay!  I have heard of your town,” said Ina.  “Now, can tell us how Morgan and his brother came to be in company with outlaws?”

“He fell out with Gerent over us, to begin with.  I went with our chiefs to Exeter when we first came seeking a home, to promise tribute if we were left in peace in the place we had chosen.  Gerent was willing enough, but Morgan, who claims some sort of right over the Devon end of the kingdom, was against our biding at all, and there were words.  However, Gerent and we had our way, and so we thought to hear