And I know not that I saw anything more than mortal—­though maybe I did—­until as we went to Cnut’s dune, under which Egil’s ship lay, and we passed that place where the left wing of our line had been driven back on the marsh.  Then I saw an armed man coming towards us, and Thrand, who walked at my shoulder, closed up to me, for the warrior had a drawn sword in his hand.

And when we came face to face I knew that I looked once more on Ulfkytel our earl, and a great fear fell on me, for he lay with his men in the mound where he fell, and Egil and I had raised it over him.  Then I must speak.

“Greeting to the earl,” I said, and my voice sounded strange.

But he made no answer, save that he looked me in the face and smiled at me gravely and sweetly, and sheathed the sword he held, folding his arms thereafter as one whose work is done.  And while one might count a score, I saw him, plainly as in life, and then he was gone.

Wherefore I thought that our own earl was not wroth with me for what I would do; and after that my mind was at rest, and ready to take what peace might come to me at the hands of Cnut the king.

“We have seen the earl,” Thrand said, when he was gone.

“Aye.  He tells us that the war is at an end, and that, in truth, Cnut is king in East Anglia.”

“It is well,” Thrand answered simply.  “Dane were my fathers, and Danish is my name and that of Guthorm my brother.  If Cnut lets us keep our old customs and governs with justice, it is all we need.”

There was spoken the word of all Anglia, whether of the north or south folk, and I knew it.  No man would but hail him there willingly.  Our people had never forgotten that the Wessex kings were far from them, and that little help came from thence.

Now, when I came to Egil, I told him that the letter I had gotten bore messages to me from Eadmund, and I read it to him so far as I have written here.

“This is good,” he answered, when I said that it should be as the king said.  “Now are you Cnut’s man and my friend indeed.  Thorkel, my foster brother, is to be Earl of East Anglia, and you shall be Thane of Bures as ever.  And I shall have to mind Colchester and this shore, and we shall see much of each other.”

So he rejoiced, and I grew more cheerful as the days went on.  Then Thorkel came, and together we went to Colchester, and thence he bade me go to Bures in peace and take my old place, for he said that Cnut and Emma the queen would have me honoured in all that I would, even did he himself not wish to keep me as his own friend.

Then said I: 

“What of Geirmund, your own man, who had Bures?”

Egil laughed.

“Geirmund is the man over whom I fell at your feet at Leavenheath fight.  You yourself have made an end of him.  I wonder that you knew it not.”

So I went back to Bures, and there is no need to say how my poor folk rejoiced.  But Ailwin was not there, nor had Gunnhild been seen.  The young priest was there yet, and well loved.