"Ah, my boy," said Hereward at last, "look there, and let those be Vikings
who must."
And he pointed to the rich pastures, broken by strips of corn-land and
snug farms, which stretched between the sea and the great forest of
Flanders.
"What do you mean?"
But Hereward was silent. It was so like his own native fens. For a moment
there came over him the longing for a home. To settle down in such a fair
fat land, and call good acres his own; and marry and beget stalwart sons,
to till the old estate when he could till no more. Might not that be a
better life--at least a happier one--than restless, homeless, aimless
adventure? And now, just as he had had a hope of peace,--a hope of seeing
his own land, his own folk, perhaps of making peace with his mother and
his king,--the very waves would not let him rest, but sped him forth, a
storm-tossed waif, to begin life anew, fighting he cared not whom or why,
in a strange land.
So he was silent and sad withal.
"What does he mean?" asked the boy of the Abbot.
"He seems a wise man: let him answer for himself."
The boy asked once more.
"Lad! lad!" said Hereward, waking as from a dream. "If you be heir to such
a fair land as that, thank God for it, and pray to Him that you may rule
it justly, and keep it in peace, as they say your grandfather and your
father do; and leave glory and fame and the Vikings' bloody trade to those
who have neither father nor mother, wife nor land, but live like the wolf
of the wood, from one meal to the next.
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