He knew me, after scanning me idly for a moment, and greeted me, asking why I was not at Reedham to make that feast of which Halfden was ever speaking, and so passed on.
So we went up to the great hall in silence, sorely cast down; and that was Halfden's homecoming.
Little joy was there on the high place at the feast that night, though at the lower tables the men of our crew (for so I must ever think of those whose leader I had been for a little while, with Halfden) held high revelling with their comrades.

Many were the tales they told, and when a tale of fight and victory was done, the scald would sing it in verse that should be kept and sung by the winter fire till new deeds brought new songs to take its place.
Presently Halfden rose up, after the welcome cup had gone round and feasting was done, and the ale and mead began to flow, and he beckoned me to come with him.

Hubba would have come also, but Ingvar held him back.
"Let Wulfric have his say first," he growled; and I thanked him in my mind for his thought.
So we went to the inner chamber, where Osritha would sit with her maidens, and Halfden said: "This matter is filling all my thoughts so that I am but a gloomy comrade at the board.

Tell me all, and then what is done is done.
One may not fight against the Norn maidens {xiv}." There I told him all my story, and he remembered how I had told him, laughing, of Beorn's jealousy at first.

And when my tale was nearly done Osritha crept from her bower and came and sat beside Halfden, pushing her hand into his, and resting her head on his shoulder.
Then I ended quickly, saying that Ingvar had done justice on Beorn.
And at that remembrance the maiden shivered, and Halfden's face showed that he knew what the man's fate was like to have been at the great jarl's hands.
"So, brother," he said, when I left off speaking, "had I gone to Reedham there would have been burnt houses in East Anglia." "In Reedham ?" said I.
"Wherever this Beorn had a house; and at Caistor where that old fool Ulfkytel lives, and maybe at one or two other places on the way thither.