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THE COMING OF INGVAR'S HOST.
Aught but joy did I look for in my homecoming, but it was all too like that of Halfden, my friend.
No need to say how my kind godfather met me as one come back from the dead, nor how I sent gifts back to Ansgar's people, who sorely needed help in those days.
But very gently the old man told me that Elfric my father was dead, passing suddenly but a month since, while by his side sat Ulfkytel the Earl, blaming himself for his blindness and for his haste in not waiting for the king's judgment, and yet bidding my father take heart, for he had never known his ways of justice fail.

And he asked forgiveness also, for there had been a deadly feud concerning this between him and my people, so that but for Eadmund the King there would have been fighting.

Yet when one told Ulfkytel that men held that my father's heart broke at my loss, the great earl had made haste to come and see him, and to say these things.

So they made peace at last.
When I knew this it seemed to me that I had lost all, and for long I cared for nothing, going about listless, so that Ingild feared that I too should grow sick and die.