He meanwhile departed sadly from his brother's court, and came and dwelt alone in his Tower of the North-West Wind.
For many weeks the time passed slowly, as Sigurd brooded over his wrongs and pined in idleness.
Yet this grieved him less than the secret visits of not a few of his old comrades, who had deserted Ulf, and now came begging him to lead them forth and rid the land of a tyrant.

He sent them each sternly away, bidding them, on pain of his anger, return to their duty and serve the king; and they durst not disobey.
So passed many a weary month in the Tower of the North-West Wind, when one bright summer day a little fleet of English ships sailed gaily up the fiord under the castle walls.
Sigurd joyfully bade the voyagers welcome to his castle, for the chief of the little band was Raedwald, an English king, whom Sigurd himself only two years before had visited in his own land.

There, too, he had met not Raedwald only, but Raedwald's beautiful daughter, who now, with her gay train of attendants, accompanied her father on this visit to his friend and comrade.
And now the days passed gaily and only too swiftly for the happy Sigurd.
In the company of Raedwald and amid the smiles of the ladies, Ulf was forgotten, and all the wrongs of the past vanished.

The Tower of the North-west Wind was no longer a gloomy fortress, but a gay palace, and, like the summer day in the northern heavens, the sun of Sigurd's content knew no setting.
Before the day of Raedwald's departure arrived a wedding had taken place in the chapel of the good old Tower, and the English king, as he hauled his anchors and set his sails westward, knew not whether to mourn over the daughter he had given up or to rejoice over the son he had gained.
As for Sigurd, he could do nothing but rejoice, and some who saw him and heard him laugh said, smiling-- "The queen his wife is a fairer sweetheart than was the king his brother.

Ulf and our country and all of us are forgotten in the smiles of this little English maiden." But three days after Raedwald had sailed a storm broke over the Tower of the North-West Wind.