Leif put his questions.  “What are you called?”

“I am called Alwin, Edmund Jarl’s son.”

“Jarl-born?  Then it is likely that you can handle a sword?”

“Not a few of your own men can bear witness to that.”

Rolf spoke up with his quiet smile.  “The boy speaks the truth.  One would think that he had drunk nothing but dragon’s blood since his birth.”

“So?” said Leif dryly.  “It may be that I should be thankful my men are not torn to pieces.  But these accomplishments count for naught; none here but have them.  You must accomplish something that I think of more importance, or I shall sell you and buy a man-thrall who has been trained to work.  It seems that you can read runes:  can you also write them?”

In a flash of memory, Alwin saw again Brother Ambrose’s cell, and his rebellious self toiling at the desk; and he marvelled that in this far-off place and time that toil was to be of use to him.

“To some small degree I can,” he answered.  “I learned in my boyhood; but last summer, on tee dairy farm of Gilli of Trondhjem, I practised on sheep-skins—­”

“Gilli of Trondhjem?” Leif repeated.  He sat suddenly erect, and shot a glance at the unconscious Helga; and the old German, peering from the shadows behind him, did the same.

Alwin regarded them wonderingly.  “Yes, Gilli the trader, whom men call the Wealthy.  It was he who first had me in my captivity.”

For a long time the chief sat tugging thoughtfully at his yellow mustache.  Tyrker bent over and whispered in his ear; and he nodded slowly, with another glance at Helga.

“But for this I should never have thought of him,—­yet, it is certainly one way out of the matter.”

Suddenly he made a motion with his hand, so that the circle fell back out of hearing.  He turned and fixed his piercing eyes on the thrall as though he would probe his brain.

“I ask you to tell me what manner of man this Gilli is?”

It happened that Alwin asked nothing better than a chance to free his mind.  He answered instantly:  “Gilli of Trondhjem is a low-minded man who has gained great wealth, and is so greedy for property that he would give the nails off his hands and the tongue out of his head to get it.  He is an overbearing churl.”

Leif’s eyes challenged him, but he did not recant.

“So!” said the chief abruptly; then he added:  “I am told for certain that his wife is a well-disposed woman.”

“I say nothing against that,” Alwin assented.  “She is from England, where women are taught to bear themselves gently.”

His eulogy was cut short by an exclamation from the old German.  “Donnerwetter!  That is true!  An English captive she was.  Perhaps she their runes also understands?”

Finding this a question addressed to him, Alwin answered that he knew her to understand them, having heard her read from a book of Saxon prayers.