To the others, this also was inexplicable.  They scratched their heads, and rubbed their ears, and gaped at one another.  Leif smiled grimly as he caught their looks.  Picking a silver ring from his pouch, he tossed it to Valbrand.

“Take this to Kark to pay him for his broken head, and advise him to make less noise with his mouth in the future.”  When they were gone he turned to Alwin and signed him to rise.  “You understand a language that churls do not understand.  I will try you further.  Go dress yourself, then bring hither the runes you were reading to Rolf Erlingsson.”

Alwin obeyed in silence, a tumult of long-quiet emotions whirling through his brain,—­relief and shame and gratification, and, underneath it all, a new-born loyalty.

All the rest of the day, until the sun dropped like a red ball behind the waves, he sat at the chief’s feet and read to him from the Saxon book.  He read stumblingly, haltingly; but he was not blamed for his blunders.  His listener caught at the meanings hungrily, and pieced out their deficiencies with his keen wit and dressed their nakedness in his vivid imagination.  Now his great chest heaved with passion, and his strong hand gripped his sword-hilt; now he crossed himself and sighed, and again his eyes flashed like smitten steel.  When at last the failing light compelled Alwin to lay down the book, the chief sat for a long time staring at him with keen but absent eyes.

After a while he said, half as though he was speaking to himself:  “It is my belief that Heaven itself has sent you to me, that I may be strengthened and inspired in my work.”  His face kindled with devout rapture.  “It must have been by the guidance of Heaven that you were trained in so unusual an accomplishment.  It was the hand of God that led you hither, to be an instrument in a great work.”

Awe fell upon Alwin, and a shiver of superstition that was almost terror.  He bowed his head and crossed himself.

But when he looked up, the thread had snapped; Leif was himself again.  He was eying the boy critically, though with a new touch of something like respect.

He said abruptly:  “It is not altogether befitting that one who has the accomplishments of a holy priest should go garbed like a base-bred thrall.  What is the color of the clothes that priests wear in England?”

Alwin answered, wondering:  “They wear black habits, lord.  It is for that reason that they are called Black Monks.”

Rising, Leif beckoned to Valbrand.  When the steersman stood before him, he said:  “Take this boy down to my chests and clothe him from head to foot in black garments of good quality.  And hereafter let it be understood that he is my honorable bowerman, and a person of breeding and accomplishments.”

The old henchman looked at the new favorite as dispassionately as he would have looked at a weapon or a dog that had taken his master’s fancy.  “I would not oppose your will in this, any more than in other things; yet I take it upon me to remind you of Kark.  If you make this cook-boy your bowerman, to keep the scales balancing you must make him who was your bowerman into a cook-boy.  It is in my mind that Kark’s father will take that as il1 as—­”