So I took his hide shoes also, casting away my frayed velvet foot coverings into the underwood.
Now once more I stood clad in the arms of a free man and how good it was to feel again the well known and loved weight of mail, and helm, and sword tugging at me I cannot say.

But this I know, that, like the strong man of old our old priest told me of, as I shook myself, my strength and manhood came back to me.
But now, whereas I had been haled from my feasting a careless boy, and had stood before my judges as an angry man, as I look back, I see that from that arming I rose up a grim and desperate warrior with wrongs to right, and the will and strength to right them.
So I stood for a little, and the savage thoughts that went through my mind I may not write.

Then I turned to my captive and looked at him, though I thought nothing concerning him.

But what he saw written in my face as it glowered on him from under the helmet bade him cry aloud to me to spare him.
And at that I laughed.

It was so good to feel that this enemy of mine feared me.