“Father,” he said quickly, “I am not the avenger.  It is a long tale—­but the lady, who is a queen in Norway, shipwrecked with us here by a strange fate, has to do with the winning back of the torque.”

“A queen!” said the hermit quickly.  “Then the rule of which I spoke must needs be broken; nay, not broken, but set aside.  Now, where are your men?”

“Never a man have we.  There is Malcolm here, and Bertric, a Saxon thane, who is my friend also and a good Christian, and the poor young queen, and no more.”

The hermit threw up his hands.

“All drowned!” he cried.  “Alack, alack!  May their souls rest in peace!”

“We sailed without them, father.  There were none, and so they are all safe at home.”

“Good luck to them—­for if they had been here they were drowned, every man of them,” said the hermit with much content, looking at me with some wonder when I laughed.

“They would not be the first by many a score whom we have buried here,” he said in reproof.  “Aye, heathen Lochlann and Christian Scot, and homely Erse yonder.  It is good to see even a few who have escaped from this shore.”

He bowed his head for a moment, and his lips moved.  Then he turned to Dalfin as a councillor might turn to his prince, and asked what he would have the brothers do for him.

“Come and ask the lady,” answered Dalfin, and so we went to the fire, where Gerda and Bertric rose up to meet us.

Now the hermit had set aside his fear of the lady, if he had any beyond his rules, and welcomed her in Erse, which I had to translate.  Also he told her that what shelter he and his brethren could give was hers, if she would be content with poor housing.

“Thank him, and tell him that any roof will be welcome after the ship’s deck,” she said, smiling at the hermit.

“Ask him to send men and help us get our stores ashore and out of the way of the fisher folk, who will be here as soon as they see the wreck,” said Bertric.  “No need to tell him that the stores are treasure for the most part.”

“Tell him it is treasure, and it will be all the safer,” Dalfin said.  “These are holy monks, of a sort who care for poverty more than wealth.  This man was well born, as you may guess from his speech.”

I told the hermit what Bertric needed, and he laughed, saying that the whole brotherhood would come and help at once.  And then he bade us follow him.  We went across the moorland for about half a mile, to the foot of the hill or nearly, and then came on a little valley amid the rising ground, where trees grew, low and wind twisted, but green and pleasant; and there I saw a cluster of little stone huts for all the world like straw beehives, built of stones most cunningly, mortarless, but fitting into one another perfectly.