She was turning away, but he leaped up and caught her by her shoulders and shook her good-naturedly.  “Now are you as womanish as your bondmaid.  You know that all the gold on all the women in Normandy is not so beautiful as one lock of this hair of yours.”

At least Helga was womanish enough to smile at this.  “Now I understand why it is that men call you Sigurd Silver-Tongue,” she laughed.  Suddenly she was all earnestness again.  “Nay, but, Sigurd, tell me this,—­I do not care how you scold about my dress,—­tell me that you do not despise me for it, or for being unlike other maidens.”

Sigurd’s grasp slipped from her shoulders down to her hands, and shook them warmly.  “Despise you, Helga my sister?  Despise you for being the bravest comrade and the truest friend a man ever had?”

She grew rosy red with pleasure.  “If that is your feeling, I am well content.”

She took a step toward the place where her horse was tethered, and looked back regretfully.  “It seems inhospitable to leave you like this.  Will you not come with us, after all?”

Sigurd threw himself down again with an emphatic gesture of refusal.  “I like better to be left so than to be left in a mound with my head cut off, which is what would happen were an outlaw to visit the King uninvited.”

“I shall not deny that that would be disagreeable,” Helga assented.  “But do not let your mishap stand in the way of your joy.  Leif has great favor with King Olaf; there is no doubt in my mind that he will be able to plead successfully for you.”

“I hope so, with all my heart,” Sigurd murmured.  “When all brave men are fighting abroad or serving the King at home, it is great shame for me to be idling here.”  And he sighed heavily as Helga passed out of hearing.

As she went by the largest of the booths, which was the sleeping-house of the steersman Valbrand and more than half the crew, Alwin came out of the door and stood looking listlessly about.  He had spent the afternoon scouring helmets amid a babble of directions and fault-finding, accented by blows.  Helga did not see him; but he gazed after her, wondering idly what sort of a mistress she was to the young bond-girl who was running after her with the cloak she had forgotten,—­wondering also what there was in the girl’s brown braids that reminded him of his mother’s little Saxon waiting-maid Editha.

The sound of a deep-drawn breath made him turn, to find himself face to face with a young mail-clad Viking, in whose shaggy black locks he recognized the Egil Olafsson whom Helga had that morning ’pointed out.  But it was not the surprise of the meeting that made Alwin leap suddenly backward into the shelter of the doorway; it was the look that he caught in the other’s dark face,—­a look so full of hate and menace that, instead of being strangers meeting for the first time, one would have supposed them lifelong enemies.

Still eying him, Egil said slowly in a voice that trembled with passion:  “So you are the English thrall,—­and looking after her already!  It seems that Skroppa spoke some truth—­” He broke off abruptly, and stood glaring, his hand moving upward to his belt.