The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-30


 quite proof against love. Baldwin of Flanders and her uncle had tried to com- pei her to marry, but she bullied and coaxed them successfully. As the best safeguard she could devise she had be- slowed a scrap of ribbon on the most re- nowned bully of the land, Ascelin, a tall knight of St Valeri and though she gave the poor fool no other encouragement, he kept the rest of the admirers well away from her after that.
 Hereward looked at her and at her dark blue eyes and her glorious black hair Straightway he thought her the fair est thing he had ever seen. And so he fell in love head over heels-a proper punish ment for having treated pretty ladies very rudely and indifferently until then If Torfrida could have foreseen what was to happen to her through her love well, like a true woman, she would have 1 done exactly what she did and taken tho ! bitter with the sweet as we must all dc ! in life unless we wish to live and die 1 alone.
 It was not long before Hereward ap- peared before her with her ribbon. which he had taken from Ascelin after pounding that stout bully most unkindly with spear and sword in the open lists. He is only bruised" reported Hereward politely tc Torfrida, but he shall be killed If you wish.''
 When Torfrida said God forbid" Here ward stamped on the ground furiously and cried that evidently he had wasted his blows and that he would return her ribbon to Sir Ascelin. Then. of course. Torfrida showed the Wake that she loved him very well.
 She bound the ribbon around his helmet and he shouted like the Berserker he was: T am Hereward, the Berserker 1 the brainhewer, the land thief, the sea ! thief, the feeder of wolf and ravenl Aoil | Aoiv'
 ! Torfrida shuddered when she heard ! that wild battle cry that fearsome slaugh- ter call of the Vikings that we have ] softened to 'Hurrah" in our degen- crate day. And when she looked at the face of the Wake, the flashing eye, the di. lated nostril, she saw the temper of the man on whom she had thrown herself SC utterly. But 1t did not deter her.
 She had many more things to endure from her bear of a lover Hereward though he had been educated in mon astery, had all the roughnesses and rude nesses and ignorances of the wild, rougl dweller in the narrow islands. Torfridt was one of the most learned persons O her day. So wise was she and so cleve except in love) that people even in cul tivated France called her a sorceress, fo | the very proper and sufficient reason tha she knew things that others did not.
 The nobles and knights at St. Ome had felt touch. at least. of that class | civilization without which good manner seem even at the present day, almos beyond the reach of the white man. Here king, boasted hugely, roared rudely an quarreled swiftly. He would spring II at banquets and chant his doughty deeds And every time he sang the height O the Cornish giant increased by at leas foot and the stature of the fairy bea was doubled.
 The clever courtiers answered hl boasts with wilder ones, which everybod enjoyed except Hereward, who took then in deadly earnest and tried to outvi them. Then Torfrida grew sometime quite contemptuous, sometimes cold sometimes altogether fierce. In secre she shed bitter tears, especially afte some gallant had congratulated her be fore the whole court on the modesty an good breeding of her young savage.
 But she was brave, good, true gir and she loved him with all her heart and she endured the poisoned words o envy and malice for his sake. and quit patiently and humbly and bravely she SC herself to teach and train her wild out law into the ideal of a perfect an true knight.
 | If Hereward had searched through tn world he could have found no woman bet ter qualified for the task than his wis and learned Torfrida. And perhaps Tor frida could have found no more nobl material on which to work than tn Wake, the wolf's head, the Viking, tn bear killer.
 He listened to her, first merely to hum or her, because women are such frai foolish-fond things; then he began [