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294 bower, with his offering. The queen was surrounded with her bower women, telling them as usual of her grievance, and they were giving her considerable sympathy and mingling their tears with hers.

Olaf went up to Thyra, saying with winning courtesy, as he handed her the plants: “See! my queen, these are the earliest and the fairest plants I ever saw.”

As he held them out, Thyra rose up angrily. She dashed the plants to the ground and replied in a voice choked with sobs and through fast falling tears:

“Greater gifts did my father, Harold Gormssen, give me when, as a child, I got my first teeth. He came hither to Norway and conquered it; but thou, for fear of my brother Sweyn, darest not journey through Denmark in order to get me what belongs to me, and of which I have been so shamefully robbed.”

King Olaf’s anger was great. The bower women trembled, and even Thyra herself realized that she had pushed her complaining too far. For a moment Olaf did not reply. His face was deadly white and his eyes glittered like naked swords in the sun. The woman whom he had made his wife out of pity for her defenceless position, to taunt him with cowardice, before the prating gossips of her court! When he spoke, his voice had lost all of its kindness and the tone was haughty and severe. “Never shall I be afraid of thy brother Sweyn, and if we meet he shall succumb.”