“Then Harold the Earl said: ‘The old man is right. King, listen to what he says.’ And he told him all, quite eagerly.”

“How did you know that? Can you understand French?”

“I am a poor idiot, give me a halfpenny,” said Martin, in a doleful voice, as he threw into his face and whole figure a look of helpless stupidity and awkwardness, which set them both laughing.

But Hereward checked himself. “And you think he was in earnest?”

“As sure as there are holy crows in Crowland. But it was of no use. Your father got a parchment, with an outlandish Norman seal hanging to it, and sent me off with it that same night to give to the lawman. So wolf’s head you are, my lord, and there is no use crying over spilt milk.”

“And Harold spoke for me? It will be as well to tell Abbot Leofric that, in case he be inclined to turn traitor, and refuse to open the gates. Once outside them, I care not for mortal man.”

“My poor boy, there will be many a one whom thou hast wronged only too ready to lie in wait for thee, now thy life is in every man’s hand. If the outlawry is published, thou hadst best start to-night, and get past Lincoln before morning.”

“I shall stay quietly here, and get a good night’s rest; and then ride out to-morrow morning in the face of the whole shire. No, not a word! You would not have me sneak away like a coward?”

Brand smiled and shrugged his shoulders: being very much of the same mind.

“At least, go north.”

“And why north?”

“You have no quarrel in Northumberland, and the King’s writ runs very slowly there, if at all. Old Siward Digre may stand your friend.”

“He? He is a fast friend of my father’s.”

“What of that? the old Viking will like you none the less for having shown a touch of his own temper. Go to him, I say, and tell him that I sent you.”

“But he is fighting the Scots beyond the Forth.”

“So much the better. There will be good work for you to do. And Gislebert of Ghent is up there too, I hear, trying to settle himself among the Scots. He is your mother’s kinsman; and as for your being an outlaw, he wants hard hitters and hard riders, and all is fish that comes to his net. Find him out, too, and tell him I sent you.”

“You are a good old uncle,” said Hereward. “Why were you not a soldier?”

Brand laughed somewhat sadly.

“If I had been a soldier, lad, where would you have looked for a friend this day? No. God has done what was merciful with me and my sins. May he do the same by thee and thine.”

Hereward made an impatient movement. He disliked any word which seemed likely to soften his own hardness of heart. But he kissed his uncle lovingly on both cheeks.

“By the by, Martin,—any message from my lady mother?”

“None!”

“Quite right and pious. I am an enemy to Holy Church and therefore to her. Good night, uncle.”

“Hey?” asked Brand; “where is that footman,—Martin you call him? I must have another word with him.”

But Martin was gone.

“No matter. I shall question him sharply enough to-morrow, I warrant.”

And Hereward went out to his lodging; while the good Prior went to his prayers.

When Hereward entered his room, Martin started out of the darkness, and followed him in. Then he shut to the door carefully, and pulled out a bag.

“There was no message from my lady: but there was this.”

The bag was full of money.

“Why did you not tell me of this before?”

“Never show money before a monk.”

“Villain! would you mistrust my uncle?”

“Any man with a shaven crown. St. Peter is his God and Lord and conscience; and if he saw but the shine of a penny, for St. Peter he would want it.”

“And he shall have it,” quoth Hereward; and flung out of the room, and into his uncle’s.

“Uncle, I have money. I am come to pay back what I took from the Steward, and as much more into the bargain.” And he told out eight-and-thirty pieces.

“Thank God and all his saints!” cried Brand, weeping abundantly for joy; for he had acquired, by long devotion, the donum lachrymarum,—that lachrymose and somewhat hysterical temperament common among pious monks, and held to be a mark of grace.

“Blessed St. Peter, thou art repaid; and thou wilt be merciful!”

Brand believed, in common with all monks then, that Hereward had robbed, not merely the Abbey of Peterborough, but, what was more, St. Peter himself; thereby converting into an implacable and internecine foe the chief of the Apostles, the rock on which was founded the whole Church.

“Now, uncle,” said Hereward, “do me one good deed in return. Promise me that, if you can help it, none of my poor housecarles shall suffer for my sins. I led them into trouble. I am punished. I have made restitution,—at least to St. Peter. See that my father and mother, if they be the Christians they call themselves, forgive and forget all offences except mine.”

“I will; so help me all saints and our Lord. O my boy, my boy, thou shouldst have been a king’s thane, and not an outlaw!”

And he hurried off with the news to the Abbot.

When Hereward returned to his room, Martin was gone.

“Farewell, good men of Peterborough,” said Hereward, as he leapt into the saddle next morning. “I had made a vow against you, and came to try you; to see whether you would force me to fulfil it or not. But you have been so kind that I have half repented of it; and the evil shall not come in the days of Abbot Leofric, nor of Brand the Prior, though it may come in the days of Herluin the Steward, if he live long enough.”

“What do you mean, you incarnate fiend, only fit to worship Thor and Odin?” asked Brand.

“That I would burn Goldenborough, and Herluin the Steward within it, ere I die. I fear I shall do it; I fear I must do it. Ten years ago come Lammas, Herluin bade light the peat-stack under me. Do you recollect?”

“And so he did, the hound!” quoth Brand. “I had forgotten that.”

“Little Hereward never forgets foe or friend. Ever since, on Lammas night,—hold still, horse!—I dream of fire and flame, and of Goldenborough in the glare of it. If it is written in the big book, happen it must; if not, so much the better for Goldenborough, for it is a pretty place, and honest Englishmen in it. Only see that there be not too many Frenchmen crept in when I come back, beside our French friend Herluin; and see, too, that there be not a peat-stack handy: a word is enough to wise men like you. Good by!”

“God help thee, thou sinful boy!” said the Abbot.

“Hereward, Hereward! Come back!” cried Brand.

But the boy had spurred his horse through the gateway, and was far down the road.

“Leofric, my friend,” said Brand, sadly, “this is my sin, and no man’s else. And heavy penance will I do for it, till that lad returns in peace.”

“Your sin?”

“Mine, Abbot. I persuaded his mother to send him hither to be a monk. Alas! alas! How long will men try to be wiser than Him who maketh men?”

“I do not understand thee,” quoth the Abbot. And no more he did.

It was four o’clock on a May morning, when Hereward set out to see the world, with good armor on his back, good weapon by his side, good horse between his knees, and good money in his purse. What could a lad of eighteen want more, who under the harsh family rule of those times had known nothing of a father’s, and but too little of a mother’s, love? He rode away northward through the Bruneswald, over the higher land of Lincolnshire, through primeval glades of mighty oak and ash, holly and thorn, swarming with game, which was as highly preserved then as now, under Canute’s severe forest laws. The yellow roes stood and stared at him knee-deep in the young fern; the pheasant called his hens out to feed in the dewy grass; the blackbird and thrush sang out from every bough; the wood-lark trilled above the high oak-tops, and sank down on them as his song sank down. And Hereward rode on, rejoicing in it all. It was a fine world in the Bruneswald. What was it then outside? Not to him, as to us, a world circular, sailed round, circumscribed, mapped, botanized, zoologized; a tiny planet about which everybody knows, or thinks they know everything: but a world infinite, magical, supernatural,—because unknown; a vast flat plain reaching no one knew whence or where, save that the mountains stood on the four corners thereof to keep it steady, and the four winds of heaven blew out of them; and in the centre, which was to him the Bruneswald, such things as he saw; but beyond, things unspeakable,—dragons, giants, rocs, orcs, witch-whales, griffins, chimeras, satyrs, enchanters, Paynims, Saracen Emirs and Sultans, Kaisers of Constantinople, Kaisers of Ind and of Cathay, and beyond them again of lands as yet unknown. At the very least he could go to Brittany, to the forest of Brocheliaunde, where (so all men said) fairies might be seen bathing in the fountains, and possibly be won and wedded by a bold and dexterous knight after the fashion of Sir Gruelan. [Footnote: Wace, author of the “Roman de Rou,” went to Brittany a generation later, to see those same fairies: but had no sport; and sang,—

 
   “Fol i alai, fol m’en revins;
    Folie quis, por fol me tins”]
 

What was there not to be seen and conquered? Where would he go? Where would he not go? For the spirit of Odin the Goer, the spirit which has sent his children round the world, was strong within him. He would go to Ireland, to the Ostmen, or Irish Danes men at Dublin, Waterford, or Cork, and marry some beautiful Irish Princess with gray eyes, and raven locks, and saffron smock, and great gold bracelets from her native hills. No; he would go off to the Orkneys, and join Bruce and Ranald, and the Vikings of the northern seas, and all the hot blood which had found even Norway too hot to hold it; and sail through witch-whales and icebergs to Iceland and Greenland, and the sunny lands which they said lay even beyond, across the all but unknown ocean. He would go up the Baltic to the Jomsburg Vikings, and fight against Lett and Esthonian heathen, and pierce inland, perhaps, through Puleyn and the bison forests, to the land from whence came the magic swords and the old Persian coins which he had seen so often in the halls of his forefathers. No; he would go South, to the land of sun and wine; and see the magicians of Cordova and Seville; and beard Mussulman hounds worshipping their Mahomets; and perhaps bring home an Emir’s daughter,—

 
  “With more gay gold about her middle,
   Than would buy half Northumberlee.”
 

Or he would go up the Straits, and on to Constantinople and the great Kaiser of the Greeks, and join the Varanger Guard, and perhaps, like Harold Hardraade in his own days, after being cast to the lion for carrying off a fair Greek lady, tear out the monster’s tongue with his own hands, and show the Easterns what a Viking’s son could do. And as he dreamed of the infinite world and its infinite wonders, the enchanters he might meet, the jewels he might find, the adventures he might essay, he held that he must succeed in all, with hope and wit and a strong arm; and forgot altogether that, mixed up with the cosmogony of an infinite flat plain called the Earth, there was joined also the belief in a flat roof above called Heaven, on which (seen at times in visions through clouds and stars) sat saints, angels, and archangels, forevermore harping on their golden harps, and knowing neither vanity nor vexation of spirit, lust nor pride, murder nor war;—and underneath a floor, the name whereof was Hell; the mouths whereof (as all men knew) might be seen on Hecla and Aetna and Stromboli; and the fiends heard within, tormenting, amid fire, and smoke, and clanking chains, the souls of the eternally lost.

As he rode on slowly though cheerfully, as a man who will not tire his horse at the beginning of a long day’s journey, and knows not where he shall pass the night, he was aware of a man on foot coming up behind him at a slow, steady, loping, wolf-like trot, which in spite of its slowness gained ground on him so fast, that he saw at once that the man could be no common runner.

The man came up; and behold, he was none other than Martin Lightfoot.

“What! art thou here?” asked Hereward, suspiciously, and half cross at seeing any visitor from the old world which he had just cast off. “How gottest thou out of St. Peter’s last night?”

Martin’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth like a running hound’s, but he seemed, like a hound, to perspire through his mouth, for he answered without the least sign of distress, without even pulling in his tongue,—

“Over the wall, the moment the Prior’s back was turned. I was not going to wait till I was chained up in some rat’s-hole with a half-hundred of iron on my leg, and flogged till I confessed that I was what I am not,—a runaway monk.”

“And why art here?”

“Because I am going with you.”

“Going with me?” said Hereward; “what can I do for thee?”

“I can do for you,” said Martin.

“What?”

“Groom your horse, wash your shirt, clean your weapons, find your inn, fight your enemies, cheat your friends,—anything and everything. You are going to see the world. I am going with you.”

“Thou canst be my servant? A right slippery one, I expect,” said Hereward, looking down on him with some suspicion.

“Some are not the rogues they seem. I can keep my secrets and yours too.”

“Before I can trust thee with my secrets, I shall expect to know some of thine,” said Hereward.

Martin Lightfoot looked up with a cunning smile. “A servant can always know his master’s secrets if he likes. But that is no reason a master should know his servant’s.”

“Thou shalt tell me thine, man, or I shall ride off and leave thee.”

“Not so easy, my lord. Where that heavy horse can go, Martin Lightfoot can follow. But I will tell you one secret, which I never told to living man. I can read and write like any clerk.”

“Thou read and write?”

“Ay, good Latin enough, and Irish too, what is more. And now, because I love you, and because you I will serve, willy nilly, I will tell you all the secrets I have, as long as my breath lasts, for my tongue is rather stiff after that long story about the bell-wether. I was born in Ireland, in Waterford town. My mother was an English slave, one of those that Earl Godwin’s wife—not this one that is now, Gyda, but the old one, King Canute’s sister—used to sell out of England by the score, tied together with ropes, boys and girls from Bristol town. Her master, my father that was (I shall know him again), got tired of her, and wanted to give her away to one of his kernes. She would not have that; so he hung her up hand and foot, and beat her that she died. There was an abbey hard by, and the Church laid on him a penance,—all that they dared get out of him,—that he should give me to the monks, being then a seven-years’ boy. Well, I grew up in that abbey; they taught me my fa fa mi fa: but I liked better conning of ballads and hearing stories of ghosts and enchanters, such as I used to tell you. I’ll tell you plenty more whenever you’re tired. Then they made me work; and that I never could abide at all. Then they beat me every day; and that I could abide still less; but always I stuck to my book, for one thing I saw,—that learning is power, my lord; and that the reason why the monks are masters of the land is, they are scholars, and you fighting men are none. Then I fell in love (as young blood will) with an Irish lass, when I was full seventeen years old; and when they found out that, they held me down on the floor and beat me till I was wellnigh dead. They put me in prison for a month; and between bread-and-water and darkness I went nigh foolish. They let me out, thinking I could do no more harm to man or lass; and when I found out how profitable folly was, foolish I remained, at least as foolish as seemed good to me. But one night I got into the abbey church, stole therefrom that which I have with me now, and which shall serve you and me in good stead yet,—out and away aboard a ship among the buscarles, and off into the Norway sea. But after a voyage or two, so it befell, I was wrecked in the Wash by Botulfston Deeps, and, begging my way inland, met with your father, and took service with him, as I have taken service now with you.”

“Now, what has made thee take service with me?”

“Because you are you.”

“Give me none of your parables and dark sayings, but speak out like a man. What canst see in me that thou shouldest share an outlaw’s fortune with me?”

“I had run away from a monastery, so had you; I hated the monks, so did you; I liked to tell stories,—since I found good to shut my mouth I tell them to myself all day long, sometimes all night too. When I found out you liked to hear them, I loved you all the more. Then they told me not to speak to you; I held my tongue. I bided my time. I knew you would be outlawed some day. I knew you would turn Viking and kempery-man, and kill giants and enchanters, and win yourself honor and glory; and I knew I should have my share in it. I knew you would need me some day; and you need me now, and here I am; and if you try to cut me down with your sword, I will dodge you, and follow you, and dodge you again, till I force you to let me be your man, for with you I will live and die. And now I can talk no more.”

“And with me thou shalt live and die,” said Hereward, pulling up his horse, and frankly holding out his hand to his new friend.

Martin Lightfoot took his hand, kissed it, licked it almost as a dog would have done. “I am your man,” he said, “amen; and true man I will prove to you, if you will prove true to me.” And he dropped quietly back behind Hereward’s horse, as if the business of his life was settled, and his mind utterly at rest.

“There is one more likeness between us,” said Hereward, after a few minutes’ thought. “If I have robbed a church, thou hast robbed one too. What is this precious spoil which is to serve me and thee in such mighty stead?”

Martin drew from inside his shirt and under his waistband a small battle-axe, and handed it up to Hereward. It was a tool the like of which in shape Hereward had seldom seen, and never its equal in beauty. The handle was some fifteen inches long, made of thick strips of black whalebone, curiously bound with silver, and butted with narwhal ivory. This handle was evidently the work of some cunning Norseman of old. But who was the maker of the blade? It was some eight inches long, with a sharp edge on one side, a sharp crooked pick on the other; of the finest steel, inlaid with strange characters in gold, the work probably of some Circassian, Tartar, or Persian; such a battle-axe as Rustum or Zohrab may have wielded in fight upon the banks of Oxus; one of those magic weapons, brought, men knew not how, out of the magic East, which were hereditary in many a Norse family and sung of in many a Norse saga.

“Look at it,” said Martin Lightfoot. “There is magic on it. It must bring us luck. Whoever holds that must kill his man. It will pick a lock of steel. It will crack a mail corslet as a nut-hatch cracks a nut. It will hew a lance in two at a single blow. Devils and spirits forged it,—I know that; Virgilius the Enchanter, perhaps, or Solomon the Great, or whosoever’s name is on it, graven there in letters of gold. Handle it, feel its balance; but no,—do not handle it too much. There is a devil in it, who would make you kill me. Whenever I play with it I long to kill a man. It would be so easy,—so easy. Give it me back, my lord, give it me back, lest the devil come through the handle into your palm, and possess you.”

Hereward laughed, and gave him back his battle-axe. But he had hardly less doubt of the magic virtues of such a blade than had Martin himself.

“Magical or not, thou wilt not have to hit a man twice with that, Martin, my lad. So we two outlaws are both well armed; and having neither wife nor child, land nor beeves to lose, ought to be a match for any six honest men who may have a grudge against us, and sound reasons at home for running away.”

And so those two went northward through the green Bruneswald, and northward again through merry Sherwood, and were not seen in that land again for many a year.