wealth; so that men deem they have never seen so many things of price heaped up together in one place. All this they bore to the ships of King Alf, and Hjordis and the bondmaid went with them. Therewith these sail away to their own realm, and talk how that surely on that field had fallen the most renowned of kings.
So the king sits by the tiller, but the women abide in the forecastle; but talk he had with the women and held their counsels of much account.
In such wise the king came home to his realm with great wealth, and he himself was a man exceeding goodly to look on. But when he had been but a little while at home, the queen, his mother, asked him why the fairest of the two women had the fewer rings and the less worthy attire.
“I deem,” she said, “that she whom ye have held of least account is the noblest of the twain.”
He answered: “I too have misdoubted me, that she is little like a bondwoman, and when we first met, in seemly wise she greeted noble men. Lo now, we will make a trial of the thing.”
So on a time as men sat at the drink, the king sat down to talk with the women, and said—
“In what wise do ye note the wearing of the hours, whenas night grows old, if ye may not see the lights of heaven?”
Then says the bondwoman, “This sign have I, that whenas in my youth I was wont to drink much in the dawn, so now when I no longer use that manner, I am yet wont to wake up at that very same tide, and by that token do I know thereof.”
Then the king laughed and said, “Ill manners for a king’s daughter!” And therewith he turned to Hjordis,
