"
"I would that we were back in Grimsby," he said, with a great sigh.
"This is a place of shadows. Ghosts are these of days that I think can
never have been."
"Well," said I, wanting to take him out of himself, "this is no ghost,
at all events. I would that one of our brothers would come from home
that I might send it to them in Grimsby. We do not need it."
So I showed him the gold, and he wondered at it, and laughed, saying
that the housecarls had the best place after all. And so he went on, and
I back to the gate.
Surely he minded at last the days when Gunnar his father had ridden home
to the gate, as the Danish earl had ridden even now, and had called his
son to him with that call. It was all coming back, as one thing or
another brought it to his mind; and I wondered what should be when he
knew that the dream was the truth. For what should Havelok, foster-son
of the fisher, do against a king who for twelve long years had held his
throne? And who in all the old land would believe that he was indeed the
son of the lost king? Better, it seemed to me, that this had not
happened, and that he had been yet the happy, careless, well-loved son
of Grim, with no thought of aught higher than the good of the folk he knew.
When I got back to the gate, we were marched down the town, that we
might be ready to receive the princess; and as I went through the
market, I saw one of the porters whom I knew, and I beckoned to him, so
that he came alongside me in the ranks, and I asked him if he would go
to Grimsby for me for a silver penny.
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