alas! our misfortunes must only be greater than before."

"He spoke kindly to me," explained Olaf, "and I could not refuse
to answer him when he asked me how I came to be a bond slave. I
little thought that he was an enemy."

"You are unskilled in the knowledge of men, Ole," returned Thorgils.
"There is a look in his eyes that might soon have told you that
there is evil in his heart, and such smooth tongued men as he are
not to be trusted. But there is one good thing that your thoughtlessness
has done: it has brought us again under one master, so it will go
ill if, working together, we cannot contrive to run away, and join
some viking ship."

"That will not be easy if our new master should take us to an inland
place," said Olaf. "None of his men have the marks of the sea upon
them; they are landmen."

Thorgils glanced up into the sky and searched for the polar star.

"We are journeying southward," he said presently.

"And what country lies to the south?" asked Olaf.

Thorgils could not tell. But he remembered that on a time some
merchants had come to the coast from a great city in the south called
Mikligard--which was the Norseman's name for Constantinople, --
and he guessed that that might be their journey's end.

Then Olaf crept nearer to their sleeping companion and wakened him.