"
"Do you call that tenderly? You have nigh pulled the boy's head off."
"Would that I had! Ah," went on Hereward, apostrophizing the unconscious
Atheling,--"ah, that I had broken that white neck once and for all! To
have sent thee feet foremost to Winchester, to lie by thy grandfathers and
great-grandfathers, and then to tell Norman William that he must fight it
out henceforth, not with a straw malkin like thee, which the very crows
are not afraid to perch on, but with a cock of a very different
hackle,--Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark."
And Hereward drew Brain-biter.
"For mercy's sake! you will not harm the lad?"
"If I were a wise man now, and hard-hearted as wise men should be, I
should--I should--" and he played the point of the sword backwards and
forwards, nearer and nearer to the lad's throat.
"Master! master!" cried Leofric, clinging to his knees; "by all the
saints! What would the Blessed Virgin say to such a deed!"
"Well, I suppose you are right. And I fear what my lady at home might say;
and we must not do anything to vex her, you know. Well, let us do it
handsomely, if we must do it. Get water somewhere, in his helmet. No, you
need not linger. I will not cut his throat before you come back."
Leofric went off in search of water, and Hereward knelt with the
Atheling's head on his knee, and on his lip a sneer at all things in
heaven and earth.
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