At last the Dane held his hand, and left his tyrant groaning.  He broke the whip stock and twisted the thong from the end of the fragment.  Then he tied it round the neck of the slaver, and rose up and saluted me in the way of the Danish courtman.

“Whither, lord?” he asked, quite coolly.  “I am ready.”

“Better go back to the sheriffs,” I said.  “Maybe we shall have to answer for this, and we will tell him first.”

“No,” he said, with the ghost of a smile; “you will not set eyes on this man again.  What I told you is true.  He has no more right to me than the thrall who found me; less, maybe, for I suppose the thrall would have taken me to his lord, who had some claim on me for a castaway.”

The crowd closed in round the slaver, and the other slaves raised a sort of wretched cheer as we went away.  Soon we turned the corner of the street and came to the outskirts of the fair again, and none had followed us.  There the decent folk stared at us and our ragged follower somewhat, and a thought came to me.

“Comrade,” I said, for I could not mind his name, “let me rig you out afresh before we part.”

“They call me Erling,” he said.  “Have you so many men to serve you that we must needs part?”

“No,” I answered, “but I am no sort of a master to serve.  I will help an old comrade home, however.”

“Home was burnt a year ago,” he said.  “Let me bide with you, thane; I must be some man’s man.  You will go back to the west presently, I suppose?”

“Yes, after a time.  What of that? for it is not your way.”

“Your way is mine, unless you drive me from you.  You have given me my freedom, and I know it.  Let me serve you freely.”

“Well,” said I, “you will be my only servant when once I leave King Carl’s train, with which I have come.”

“So much the better,” he said.  “I am likely to be as handy a servant as you can find, in most things.”

“Oh,” said Werbode, laughing, “take him, Wilfrid.  Free service is not to be despised.  Moreover, if you want any one well and soundly beaten, here is your man.”

“I can keep the thane’s back at a pinch, young sir,” said the Dane quietly.  “That mayhap is more than most will do if they are hired.”

“Faith, I believe you could,” said Werbode, looking the man’s wiry frame up and down.

“Take him, Wilfrid.”

“Why, then,” said I, “so I will, and gladly, for just so long as I please you as a master.  And when you will leave me, you shall go without blame.  Now let us see to clothing you afresh.”

So we went to the quarter of the fair where such things as we needed were to be had, and there we took pleasure in fitting my new follower out in all decent housecarl attire, not by any means sparing for good leather jerkin and Norwich-cloth hose and hood, for I would not have him looked down on by our Frankish servants.  And, indeed, with weapon on hip and round helm on head, over washed face and combed hair, he seemed a different man altogether.  The old free walk of the seaman came back to him, and he looked the world in the face again as the free warrior he was.