The rain left us, passing ahead of us like a dark wall, and the moon shone out suddenly from the cloud’s edge, and then across the land leaped a great white rainbow, perfect and bright, so that one could dimly see the seven colours which should be in its span.  And one end rested on the river bank close under the place where the cart stood among the trees, and the other was away beyond the forest, eastward somewhere.

“Lo,” said the monk who had bidden us come, “yonder is the sign of hope, leading us as it were the pillar of fire of Holy Writ!”

“Men say there is ever treasure hidden under the end of a rainbow,” said the reeve; “but never yet did I meet with a man who had found it.  Yet I have never seen the like of this.  I have heard that they may be seen at night.”

And so said another and another; for indeed men look to their feet rather than to the sky at night, and thereby miss the things they might see.  But a strange thought came to my mind, and I spoke it.

“Under the end of that pillar does indeed lie the treasure we seek.  See, it is not on the wood, but on the river bank.  We searched not there, comrade.”

“Ay, we shall find it there,” Erling answered.  “It is Bifrost—­Allfather’s bridge.  He takes his son home across it.”

The rainbow faded and passed to the north and east with the rain, and it went across the land through which Ethelbert had ridden so gaily but a few days agone.  Sometimes I love to think that its end rested here and there on house or village or church which had been the happier for the bright presence of the king, and betimes I think that a strange fancy for a rough warrior like myself.  Yet I had ridden with Ethelbert, and the thoughts he set in the minds of men are not as common thoughts.  I hold that once I rode and spoke with a very saint.

There fell a sort of awe and a silence on us after that.  Silently we went on up the riverside track, for I was leading with Erling, and that strange belief that by the river we should find what we sought would not leave me; and when we came below the place where the cart was, I saw marks where its wheels had riven the soft earth close to the water.  Without a word I signed my companions to spread abroad and search, and I dismounted, and with the bridle of my horse over my arm, I went scanning each foot of the ground in the moonlight.

Twenty yards, not more, from the water, where some winter flood had left a wide patch of sand and little pebbles, I saw the marks of the cart again.  It had stopped there, and round the spot were deep footprints of men.  They went on for a few yards, and then there was a little fresh-turned place.  Out of that lapped a piece of cloth, plain to be seen in the light of the moon, but easily overlooked in the haste of those who had left it.  And then I knew that I had indeed found the king.

Now I lifted my hand, and the rest saw me, one by one, and came to my side, and for a moment we stood still, not daring to disturb that resting.  Then I took the spade one man had, and gently turned the gravel from that bit of cloth, and there was surety.  They who set him there had but covered him hastily, no doubt because they heard our friends after them.