A Prince of Cornwall Part 46

"Build us a church at Watchet, and set there a priest who shall teach us the way of the Christian. We have seen you forego a blood feud and do well to the innocent man whom our faith would have bidden you slay, and it is good. We know you for a brave warrior, and your faith has not taken the might from your heart as we were told it must. Only let the priest be a Saxon."

Then he added, as if thinking aloud:

"Ay, Odin and Thor and the rest of the Asir are far off from us here. Our old faith falls from us, and we are ready for the new.

Let it be soon."

There I think that the hand of Nona wrought, for the Norse folk fairly wors.h.i.+pped her. So it was not long before that good friend of mine, the Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry, found me the right man, and one day thereafter Nona and I stood sponsors for Thorgils and one or two more whom we knew well, at the font in the new church which the gold of Mordred built instead of the s.h.i.+p, and soon all the little town was Christian in more than name.

There is happiness at Eastdean, and we meet with Erpwald and Elfrida at the house of her father now and then, and they have been here also. But I have never had time to go to Eastdean again, though it is a promise that we will do so when we may.

It is the word of Ina my master that all things go well where I bear rule for him, and I fear little blame, if little praise may be for me, when Owen comes to us from time to time. If there is any praise, it is due to my fair British princess, who is my best adviser in all things.

So there is peace; and some day, and that no distant one, there will grow up here a new race in the west, wrought of the blood of Saxon and Briton and Norseman; and the men of that Devon and Somerset that shall be, will have the doggedness of the Saxon and the fire of the Welsh and the boldness of the Norse, to be first of all England, maybe, in peace and in war, on sh.o.r.e and at sea. And that will have been brought to pa.s.s by the wisdom of Ina, whose even laws are held the wisest that the race of Hengist has ever known.

It is in my mind that the lesson of the wisdom of equal rights for all men, whether conquered or conqueror, is one that will bide with us in the days to come, and be our pride.

Now it seems that I have told my story so far as any will care to hear it. But if there has been aught worth telling it has centered round that one who took me from the jaws of the wild wolf in the Andredsweald. First in my heart, and first in the hearts of his people now at last, must be set the name of my foster father, Owen--the Prince of Cornwall.

THE END.