In my own heart was the wish to go back to England always, for there was my home; and I found that it was the same with my brothers, for there is that in the English land which makes all who touch it love it.  And there was the mound that held my father, and there were the folk among whom we had been brought up in the town that we had made; and I longed to see once more the green marshes and the grey wolds of Lindsey, and the brown waves of the wide Humber rolling shorewards, line after line.  I tired of the heaths and forests and peat mosses of this land of my birth.  And if that was so to me, it was a yet deeper longing in the hearts of the brothers who hardly remembered this place; and after a while we spoke of it more often.

I do not know if we said much to others, but at last the younger chiefs began to wonder when the promised time when they should cross the “swan’s path” for Goldberga should come.  Maybe they tired of the long peace, as a Dane will.  But when that talk began, Withelm knew that things were ripe, and he told Havelok.  That was in the third spring of Havelok’s kingship, when it grew near to the time when men fit out their ships.

“This is what I have looked for,” he said; “and now we will delay no longer, for here am I king indeed, and there is none who will rise against me.  Wonderful it is that men have hailed me thus.  And now I will tell you, brother, that I long for England.  If I might take my friends with me, I do not think that I should care if I never came here again.  It is not my home; and here my Goldberga is not altogether happy, well as the folk love her.”

Thereafter he called a great Thing[12] of all the freemen in the land, and set the matter plainly before them, asking if they minded the words he spoke when they crowned the queen, and if they were still ready to follow him to the winning of her crown beyond the sea.

There was no doubt what the answer would be; and it was said at once that the sooner the ships were got ready the better.

“Then,” said Havelok, “who shall mind this land while I am away?  It may be long ere I come back.”

Now there was a cry that I should be king while Havelok was away, forsooth! and a poor hand I should have made at the business.  But I said that it was foolishness, and that, moreover, I would go with Havelok.  And when they said that this was modesty on my part, I answered that I had seen several kings, and that there was but one who was worth thinking of, and that was my brother; therefore, I would go on serving him where I could see him.

“This is what Grim, my father, said to me long ago,” I said—­“I was to mind the old saying, ‘Bare is back without brother behind it;’ and, therefore, I must see Havelok safe through this.”

“Why, brother,” says Havelok, laughing, “if that saying must be remembered—­and I at least know it is true—­it would make for leaving you behind me here to see all fair when my back was turned.”