Nor could I say all that I would to them of my thoughts of what I owed them for their care.
Then Wulfnoth and Godwine gave me twenty pieces of the gold from the treasure, and bade me return ere long.
"And I think that you will come back presently with an itching to get home a sword stroke at one whom I care not to name lest I break out," said the earl grimly.
"At Streone ?" said I, being light of heart.
"Aye; curses on him!" answered Wulfnoth, and turned away with a scowl of wrath.
Now Ottar had been to Penhurst with me, and we had come thence together to the ships.

And when the old walls of the great castle were lost to sight as the vessel plunged eastward, he said: "Relf's daughter is a fair maiden, friend Redwald.

It is in my mind that she will long to see you back again." "Not so," I answered; "she is but friendly." "But she had much ado not to weep when you parted just now, and I saw her run home from the gate over quickly.

These be signs," he said sagely, being a scald, and therefore wise in his own conceit about such matters.
Maybe I was glad to think that the maiden did care that I went, were it ever so little, though I would not believe that it was so.
So I came back into the Thames to Olaf, and glad was he to see me once more, and that I was in no wise the worse now for my hurts.
And in his company it soon came to pass that I longed not at all for Penhurst, though at first it seemed to me that I should have little pleasure in life away from Sexberga.

By and by I could laugh at myself for that thought, but I have never seen cause to be sorry therefor.