once more the green marshes and the grey wolds of Lindsey, and the brown
waves of the wide Humber rolling shorewards, line after line. I tired of
the heaths and forests and peat mosses of this land of my birth. And if
that was so to me, it was a yet deeper longing in the hearts of the
brothers who hardly remembered this place; and after a while we spoke of
it more often.

I do not know if we said much to others, but at last the younger chiefs
began to wonder when the promised time when they should cross the
"swan's path" for Goldberga should come. Maybe they tired of the long
peace, as a Dane will. But when that talk began, Withelm knew that
things were ripe, and he told Havelok. That was in the third spring of
Havelok's kingship, when it grew near to the time when men fit out their
ships.

"This is what I have looked for," he said; "and now we will delay no
longer, for here am I king indeed, and there is none who will rise
against me. Wonderful it is that men have hailed me thus. And now I will
tell you, brother, that I long for England. If I might take my friends
with me, I do not think that I should care if I never came here again.
It is not my home; and here my Goldberga is not altogether happy, well
as the folk love her."

Thereafter he called a great Thing[12] of all the
freemen in the land, and set the matter plainly before them, asking if
they minded the words he spoke when they crowned the queen, and if they
were still ready to follow him to the winning of her crown beyond the sea.

There was no doubt what the answer would be; and it was said at once
that the sooner the ships were got ready the better.