And at that Thrand turned and went away quickly, and I sat down and said: "What will Earl Edric do with me ?" One said one thing and one another, and I did not listen much.

But they all thought in the end that Edric's lust for gold would make him hold me to heavy ransom.

I thought that he loved revenge even better than wealth, and this cheered me not at all.
About sunset Edric Streone came.

Thrand had, I thought, made his escape, most likely, and I was glad.

He had helped me all he could.
The earl left the party he was with, and came to me and my guards.
He looked at me sidewise for a while, and then spoke to me in broad Wessex, which the Danes could hardly understand, if at all.
"So, Master Redwald, what will you give for freedom ?" I answered him back in my own Anglian speech, which any Dane knows, for it is but the Danish tongue with a difference of turn of voice, and words here and there: "I will give a traitor nothing." "But I am going to hang you," and he chuckled in his evil way.
There were many meanings in that laugh of Streone's.
"You can do as you like with me, as it happens," I answered, "but I had rather swing at a rope's end as an honest man than sit at Cnut's table as Streone the traitor." He tried to laugh, but it stuck in his throat, and so he turned to rage instead.
"Smite him," he said to the Danes.
"Not we," said the spokesman of the half dozen.