MARGIT.

This I like well; now are you already on the right way to amendment.  Yet one word more—­to-day we hold a feast at Solhoug.

KNUT.

  A feast?

BENGT.

Yes, Knut Gesling:  you must know that it is our wedding day; this day three years ago made me Dame Margit’s husband.

MARGIT.

[Impatiently, interrupting.] As I said, we hold a feast to-day.  When Mass is over, and your other business done, I would have you ride hither again, and join in the banquet.  Then you can learn to know my sister.

KNUT.

So be it, Dame Margit; I thank you.  Yet ’twas not to go to Mass that I rode hither this morning.  Your kinsman, Gudmund Alfson, was the cause of my coming.

MARGIT.

  [Starts.] He!  My kinsman?  Where would you seek him?

KNUT.

His homestead lies behind the headland, on the other side of the fiord.

MARGIT.

  But he himself is far away.

ERIK.

  Be not so sure; he may be nearer than you think.

KNUT.

  [Whispers.] Hold your peace!

MARGIT.

  Nearer?  What mean you?

KNUT.

Have you not heard, then, that Gudmund Alfson has come back to Norway?  He came with the Chancellor Audun of Hegranes, who was sent to France to bring home our new Queen.

MARGIT.

True enough, but in these very days the King holds his wedding-feast in full state at Bergen, and there is Gudmund Alfson a guest.

BENGT.

  And there could we too have been guests had my wife so willed it.

ERIK.

  [Aside to KNUT.] Then Dame Margit knows not that—?

KNUT.

[Aside.] So it would seem; but keep your counsel. [Aloud.] Well, well, Dame Margit, I must go my way none the less, and see what may betide.  At nightfall I will be here again.

MARGIT.

And then you must show whether you have power to bridle your unruly spirit.

BENGT.

  Aye, mark you that.

MARGIT.

  You must lay no hand on your axe—­hear you, Knut Gesling?

BENGT.

Neither on your axe, nor on your knife, nor on any other weapon whatsoever.

MARGIT.

  For then can you never hope to be one of our kindred.