“Tell him that you are Egil at the same time,” a Dane sneered.  “You will not hoodwink him as you have this Saxon.”

“Is not this man Egil?” I asked, looking at Thrand with a hope that he would guess whom I needed.

“He Egil!” they answered, laughing loudly.  And at that Thrand turned and went away quickly, and I sat down and said: 

“What will Earl Edric do with me?”

One said one thing and one another, and I did not listen much.  But they all thought in the end that Edric’s lust for gold would make him hold me to heavy ransom.  I thought that he loved revenge even better than wealth, and this cheered me not at all.

About sunset Edric Streone came.  Thrand had, I thought, made his escape, most likely, and I was glad.  He had helped me all he could.

The earl left the party he was with, and came to me and my guards.  He looked at me sidewise for a while, and then spoke to me in broad Wessex, which the Danes could hardly understand, if at all.

“So, Master Redwald, what will you give for freedom?”

I answered him back in my own Anglian speech, which any Dane knows, for it is but the Danish tongue with a difference of turn of voice, and words here and there: 

“I will give a traitor nothing.”

“But I am going to hang you,” and he chuckled in his evil way.  There were many meanings in that laugh of Streone’s.

“You can do as you like with me, as it happens,” I answered, “but I had rather swing at a rope’s end as an honest man than sit at Cnut’s table as Streone the traitor.”

He tried to laugh, but it stuck in his throat, and so he turned to rage instead.

“Smite him,” he said to the Danes.

“Not we,” said the spokesman of the half dozen.  “Settle your own affairs between you.”

“Take him to yon tree and hang him, and have done,” said Edric.

“Spear me rather,” said I in a low voice to the men.

They laughed uneasily, but did not move, and Edric again bade them take me to the tree, which was about a hundred paces away.

They took me there and set me under a great bough, and then stood looking at me and the earl.  They had no rope, and the belts that bound me were of no use for a halter.  Edric saw what was needed, and swore.  Then he sent one of the men to the ships to get a line of some sort; and I think that his utter hatred of anyone who had seen through his plans made him spare me from spear or sword, for there is no disgrace in death by steel.  But at this time there seemed no disgrace in the death he meant me to die, for it was shame to him, not to me.

The ships were not so far off.  It was not long before three or four men came through the gathering dusk, and one had a coil of rope over his shoulder.  And after them came across the hillside a horseman, beside whom ran a man on foot.  There were many men about, and these were too far for me to heed them.  I only noticed that which should end my life.