dropped asleep for very weariness, or out of his swoon had passed into
sleep, I cannot say, but at her touch he stirred a little.

"What child is this? and how came he here?" she asked, wondering.

"Already your dream has told you truly how he came," Grim answered, "but
who he is I do not rightly know yet. Take him up and bathe him, wife;
and if he is the one I think him, there will be a mark whereby we may
know him."

"How should he be marked? And why look you to find any sign thus?"

But Grim had turned down the rough shirt and bared the child's neck and
right shoulder, whereon were bruises that made Leva well-nigh weep as
she saw them, for it was plain that he had been evilly treated for many
days before this. But there on the white skin was the mark of the king's
line---the red four-armed cross with bent ends which Gunnar and all
his forebears had borne.

Seeing that, Leva looked up wondering in her husband's face, and he
answered the question that he saw written in her eyes.

"He is as I thought---he is Havelok, the son of Gunnar, our king.
Hodulf gave him to me that I might drown him."

Then he told her all that had happened, and how from the first time that
he had lifted the sack and felt what was within it he had feared that
this was what was being done. Hodulf would have no rival growing up
beside him, and as he dared not slay him openly, he would have it
thought that he had been stolen away by his father's friends, and then