After a moment Alwin went on steadily, “I hid myself under this disguise because I believed that luck might grant me the chance to render you some service which should outweigh my offence.  Because I was a short-sighted fool, I did not see that the better the Norman succeeded, the worse became the Saxon’s deceit.  My mind changed when your own lips told me what would be the fate of the man who should deceive you.”

The chief’s face was as impassive as stone, but he nodded slightly.

“A man of my age does not take it well to be fooled by boys,” he said.  “It is a poor compliment to his intelligence, when they have the opinion that they can mould him between their fingers.  Though he had rendered me the greatest service in the world, the man who should deceive me should die.”

Silence fell like a shroud upon the scattered groups.  With a queer little smile upon her drawn lips, Helga softly unsheathed her dagger and ran her fingers along its edge.  Alwln, earl’s son, drew a long breath, and the muscles of his white face twitched a little; then he pulled himself together resolutely.  With one hand he plucked the knife from his belt and cast it into the chief’s lap; with the other, he tore his tunic open from neck to belt.

“I have asked no mercy,” he said, proudly.

Leif made no motion to pick up the weapon.  Instead, a glint of something like dry humor touched his keen eyes.

“No,” he said, quietly.  “You have asked nothing of what you should have asked.  You have even failed to ask whether or not you have deceived me.”

With her dagger half drawn, Helga paused to stare at him.

“You—­knew—?” she gasped.

Leif smiled a dry fine smile.  “I have known since the day on which Tyrker was lost,” he said.  “And I had suspected the truth since the night of the day upon which we sailed from Greenland.”

He made a gesture toward the shield-maiden that was half mocking and half stern.  “You showed little honor to my judgment, kinswoman, when you took it for granted I should not know that love alone could cause a woman to behave as you have done.  Or did you think I had not heard to whom your heart had been given?  That my ears only had been dead to the love tale which every servant-maid in Brattahlid rolled like honey on her tongue?  Or did you imagine that I knew you so little as to think you capable of loving one man in the winter and another in the spring?  Even had the Norman borne no resemblance to the Englishman, still would I—­”

“But...”  Helga stammered, “but—­I thought that you thought—­Rolf said that Sigurd—­”

For perhaps the first time in his life, Rolf’s cheeks burned with mortification as a derisive snap of the chief’s fingers fell upon his ear.

“Sigurd!  Your playmate!  With whom you have quarrelled and made up since there were teeth in your head!  By Peter, if it were not that the joke appears to lie wholly on my side, I could find it in my heart to punish the four of you without mercy, for no other crime than your opinion of my intelligence!”