“Speak,” he said to Godwin.  “The gift is great that I would not give to either of you if it be within my power.”

“Sir,” said Godwin, “we seek the leave to ask your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

“What! the two of you?”

“Yes, sir; the two of us.”

Then Sir Andrew, who seldom laughed, laughed outright.

“Truly,” he said, “of all the strange things I have known, this is the strangest—­that two knights should ask one wife between them.”

“It seems strange, sir; but when you have heard our tale you will understand.”

So he listened while they told him all that had passed between them and of the solemn oath which they had sworn.

“Noble in this as in other things,” commented Sir Andrew when they had done; “but I fear that one of you may find that vow hard to keep.  By all the saints, nephews, you were right when you said that you asked a great boon.  Do you know, although I have told you nothing of it, that, not to speak of the knave Lozelle, already two of the greatest men in this land have sought my daughter Rosamund in marriage?”

“It may well be so,” said Wulf.

“It is so, and now I will tell you why one or other of the pair is not her husband, which in some ways I would he were.  A simple reason.  I asked her, and she had no mind to either, and as her mother married where her heart was, so I have sworn that the daughter should do, or not at all—­for better a nunnery than a loveless bridal.

“Now let us see what you have to give.  You are of good blood—­that of Uluin by your mother, and mine, also on one side her own.  As squires to your sponsors of yesterday, the knights Sir Anthony de Mandeville and Sir Roger de Merci, you bore yourselves bravely in the Scottish War; indeed, your liege king Henry remembered it, and that is why he granted my prayer so readily.  Since then, although you loved the life little, because I asked it of you, you have rested here at home with me, and done no feats of arms, save that great one of two months gone which made you knights, and, in truth, gives you some claim on Rosamund.

“For the rest, your father being the younger son, your lands are small, and you have no other gear.  Outside the borders of this shire you are unknown men, with all your deeds to do—­for I will not count those Scottish battles when you were but boys.  And she whom you ask is one of the fairest and noblest and most learned ladies in this land, for I, who have some skill in such things, have taught her myself from childhood.  Moreover, as I have no other heir, she will be wealthy.  Well, what more have you to offer for all this?”

“Ourselves,” answered Wulf boldly.  “We are true knights of whom you know the best and worst, and we love her.  We learned it for once and for all on Death Creek quay, for till then she was our sister and no more.”

“Ay,” added Godwin, “when she swore herself to us and blessed us, then light broke on both.”