Hadding shook his head. “No, I believe he speaks truth of a sort, and I will not torture a man who once followed my father to battle.”

“Thank you, lord, thank you,” gasped Glum.

“But speak not of your honor,” said Hadding. “That you have thrown away.”

Glum sagged down onto the floor and sat with his face sunken between his knees. Hadding went outside. He stood there among his men in the sunlight, waiting. Now and then a warrior cleared his throat or shifted his feet, but nobody spoke.

After a while the searchers came back, muddy and disheveled. “We followed the burrow beneath the stockade and on till it came up near an oak in yonder woods,” Egil told. “We found only heaped-up earth.”

“You’d hardly find more,” Hadding said. “The thieves were at their work a long while—mostly at night, I think, when they could steal out to it with nobody marking them. The winter nights are the long ones. I’ll go later and see. First I have a judgment to call for.”

He bade two men stay in the house and others spell them until it could be made more safe than formerly. The rest of his guards went back to the hall with him. Glum walked between two of them, leaning on their arms, head bowed low.

Now Hadding sent word around that on the morrow there would be a meeting to which all men of the neighborhood should come. Thereafter he had those who had passed through the burrow bring him to the end where they crawled forth. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll cast about, and don’t want any tracks trampled.”

They knew what woodcraft as well as seamanship was his, and obeyed. When he returned to them, he sighed, “No, it’s too late. Weather has blurred every spoor away. Yet from the look of the mound here, the thieves weren’t done digging till a month or two ago. Surely they’ve hidden their loot somewhere in the woods. Unless they’re utter fools, they’ll bide their time. Next year, when folk have half forgotten this and the warfaring is the big news, they’ll sneak out, pry loose the gems, melt down the metal, and trade for other wares when the merchants gather at Haven. Or they may make off to the Jutes or Angles or Saxons and set themselves up there.” His anger flashed, only for an eye blink but so cold that those hardy men quailed the least bit. “That they would dare! With ill shall ill be repaid.”

His face became a mask. Speaking no more, he led them back. Likewise was he withdrawn at eventide. His mood spread to his men, and that turned into a bleak meal. When he and his leman sought their shutbed he did not take her in his arms. She knew that he lay long awake beside her in the dark.