the hall door, where an officer of the court, dressed with
barbaric splendour, ushered him into the drinking-room. A
discordant chorus of outlandish voices, raised by a hundred guests
or more, bade him welcome. He walked up to his seat by the king,
and on the spur of the moment could hit on no plan of
communicating with his men. Helgi followed him to the dais, and
with him he just found time to exchange a word.

"Drink little, and watch!" he whispered.

"Have you then seen him too?" Helgi replied, in the same anxious
tone. Estein looked at him in surprise, and Helgi, coming close
beside him, added rapidly,--

"The last torch-bearer but one was the man we captured in the
forest and freed this morning, and methinks I see another of our
prisoners even now. King Bue's hird-men [Footnote: Bodyguard.]
both, sent--" he had to turn away abruptly, and Estein finished
the sentence under his breath,--

"Sent to trap us."

He took his seat, and glancing round the hall saw his twenty
followers scattered here and there among the crowd of guests.

"Fool!" he thought, "I have walked into the trap like a child in
arms. The whole country has been prepared against our coming, the
people told to leave their houses, and the king's own hird-men set
as decoys in our path. Can this be the meaning of the Runes?"