Alwin recognized the melody with a throb that was half of pleasure, half
of pain. In the old days, Editha had sung that song. Poor little
gentle-hearted Editha! The last time he had seen her, she had been borne
past him, white and unconscious, in the arms of one of the marauding
Danes. He shook himself fiercely to drive off the memory. Turning the
corner of Helga's booth, he came suddenly upon the singer, a slender
white-robed figure leaning in the shadow of the doorway. Sigurd still
lounged under the trees, half dozing, half listening.

As the thrall stepped out of the shadow into the moonlight, the singer
sprang to her feet, and the song merged into a great cry.

"My lord Alwin!"

It was Editha herself. Running to meet him, she dropped on her knees
before him and began to kiss his hands and cry over them. "Oh, my dear
lord," she sobbed, "you are so changed! And your hair--your beautiful
hair! Oh, it is well that Earl Edmund and your lady mother are dead,--it
would break their hearts, as it does mine!" Forgetting her own plight,
she wept bitterly over his, though he tried with every gentle word to
soothe her.

It was a sad meeting; it could not be otherwise. The memory of their
last terrible parting, the bondage in which they found each other, the
shameful, hopeless future that stretched before them,--it was all full
of bitterness. When Editha went in at last, her poor little throat was
bursting with sobs. Alwin sank down on the trunk of a fallen tree and
buried his head in his hands, and the first groan that his troubles had
wrung from him was forced now from his brave lips.