with the old king. Then he asked me some questions about matters
there, and in the midst of my answers sprang up.

"Why," he cried, "here I have forgotten the girl, and she ought to
be hearing all this, instead of sitting in the cold on the cliff.
She is Owen's goddaughter, moreover, and he was here only a little
time before he was banished. She can remember him well."

"Stay, though," he said, sitting down again. "There is your own
tale yet. Let us hear it. Maybe that is not altogether so
pleasant."

My own thought was that I was glad I might tell it without the
wondering eyes of the fair princess on me, being afraid in a sort
of way of having her think of me as the helpless sick man she had
pitied. So I hastened to tell all that story.

And when I came to the way in which Evan brought me, Howel's eyes
flashed savagely, and a black scowl came over his handsome face,
sudden as a thunderstorm in high summer.

"It will be a short shrift and a long rope for that Evan when I
catch him," he said. "He comes here every year, and I suppose that
the goods I have had from him at times have been plunder. I would
that you had ended him last night. Now he has got away in peace,
and is out of my reach, maybe, by this time. Well, how went it?"

Then I told him the end of the tale, wondering how it was that
Thorgils had let him go. I asked the prince if he could explain
that for me.