spoke from within, but he did not hear what it said.     

       Again he beat and again the voice came. And now his knocking grew feebler, for he was at the end of his strength.     

       Then the bar was suddenly withdrawn and he was looking inside a poor hut, smoky from the wood-fire in the midst of it. An old woman sat by it with a bowl in her hand, and an oldish man with a cudgel stood before him. He did not understand their speech, but he gathered he was being asked his errand.     

       “I am Biorn,” he said, “and my father was Ironbeard, the King.”      

       They shook their heads, but since they saw only a weary, tattered boy they lost their fears. They invited him indoors, and their voices were kindly. Nodding with exhaustion, he was given a stool to sit on and a bowl of coarse porridge was put into his hands. They plied him with questions, but he could make nothing of their tongue.     

       Then the thrall rose, yawned, and dropped the bar over the door. The sound was to the boy like the clanging of iron gates on his old happy world. For a moment he was on the brink of tears. But he set his teeth and stiffened his drooping neck.     

       “I am Biorn,” he said aloud, “and my father was a king.”      

       They nodded to each other and smiled. They thought his words were a grace before meat.     

  

       CHAPTER 2. THE ENGLISHMAN     

       Part 1     

       The little hut among the oak trees was dim in the October twilight on the evening of St. Callixtus' Day. It had been used by swineherds, for the earthen floor was puddled by the feet of generations of hogs, and in the corner lay piles of rotting acorns. Outside the mist had filled the forest, and the ways were muffled with fallen leaves, so that the four men who approached the place came as stealthily as shades.     

       They reconnoitred a moment at the entrance, for it was a country of war.     

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