he
land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow, by reason of
the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.
The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other,
shall say again in thine ears. The place is too strait for me; give
place to me, that I may dwell."

Oh, how touching the words seemed; for our waste and desolate places
are indeed peopled with joy and gladness, and many must have thought
of dear Bertric, our martyr boy, when they heard those words, "the
children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other." They
seemed a divine prophecy of joy and gladness unto us.

And so I preached after this manner, and as I did so I saw the
stranger was deeply moved, and marvelled who he could be, that he
entered so deeply into so personal a sermon, which treated of a
peculiar joy which a stranger intermeddleth not with.

Now after the mass was ended, we came forth from the church, and
Alfgar, with Ethelgiva, walked down the path to the Lychgate, when
Alfgar's eyes fell upon the stranger, whereupon, to our astonishment,
he started, then stepped forward, fell on his knees, and cried, with a
choked voice, "Father, your blessing!"

At first we thought it was reverence, somewhat exaggerated, to a
pilgrim, but when the aged man cried aloud, "The God of Abraham bless
thee, even thee, O my son!" and the tears streamed down the furrows of
his aged cheeks, we knew it must be something more than this, and so
it proved.

It was none other than Anlaf--Anlaf who had disappeared from all the
knowledge of friend or foe for ten years!

We all received him, especially my brother Elfwyn, with great joy--for
we shared Alfgar's happiness--and we led him into the house, where we
tendered him all the offices of hospitality.

It was by degrees that we learned his story. He was really converted
to Christianity by the example of his son, whose words produced a far
deeper effect upon him than either he or Alfgar suspected at the time.

And when he saw that son prefer a cruel death to apostasy, his heart
was moved--deeply moved, so that he pondered over all he had heard
from him and from a once loved wife, whose words had seemed lost, but
whose prayers perhaps watered them into growth after she was dead and
gone. So he left the army without telling any one whither he went, and
sought instruction from a Christian.

And he found a Christian priest hidden in the woods, where he
administ