either for Hertha or for herself.

"My forbears were safe in that place to which I go," she said; "and
I alone know where it is. When the time comes, Hertha shall tell
you of it but that must wait for the days to be."

"I fear they will be long. Let me see Hertha before I go," I said,
"for I must needs be content."

"How looked she when last you saw her?"

"Well, and bright, and happy," I answered.

"Keep that memory of her therefore," Gunnhild said. "I would not
have you see her in sickness, nor may she be waked without danger.
Tell your mother that surely if she could take Hertha with her it
should be so, but it may not be. She would be harmed by a long
journey."

The old nurse turned and left me as swiftly as she had come. And
now it is in my mind that she went thus lest she should weep. So I
was alone in the hall, and there was no more left for me to do. I
must even let things be as she would. It came into my thought that
she was right about our half-Danish folk, for though they had
fought to keep the newcomers from the land that their fathers had
won, Swein was no foreigner, and they would as soon own him as
Ethelred of Wessex, if he got the upper hand and would give them
peace. Even we Angles never forgot that the race of Ecgberht was
Saxon and not of our own kin altogether. The Dane was as near to us
as the Wessex king, save by old comradeship, and the ties that had