t hour Alfgar had almost forgotten the
meeting before him, but now it occupied his thoughts fully, and he
began to expect the arrival of Anlaf each moment. He learned from the
conversation around him that he and a portion of the band had gone to
reconnoitre the position of the prey.

While Sidroc was somewhat impatiently expecting the arrival of his
coadjutor, the cry of a raven was heard; it proved to be the signal
for the party to advance, and Sidroc and his men obeyed at once.

But all their horses were left picketed by the stream, under the care
of three of the youngest warriors, and there Alfgar was left, safely
bound to a tree, for his captors could not trust him.

He was strongly, but not cruelly bound; it evidently was not intended
to hurt him, only to secure him, and he could see that one of the
warriors was especially charged to guard him.

Oh, how anxiously he strained the senses of sight and hearing for news
from the forest party! could he but have given one warning, he would
willingly have died like Bertric; all was silence--dread silence--the
sleeping woods around gave no token of their dread inmates.

An hour and a half must have passed, when a bright light, increasing
each minute in intensity, appeared through the trees--then a loud and
startling cry arose--after which all was silence.

The light seemed to increase in extent and to have two chief centres
of its brilliancy, and Alfgar guessed them to be the hall and the
priory.

But no screams of distress or agony pierced the air from two hundred
women and children, and Alfgar hoped, oh, so earnestly! that they
might have escaped, warned in time by the theows.

With this hope he was forced to rest content, as hour after hour
rolled by, and at length the footsteps of a returning party were
heard.

It proved to be only a detachment of the fifty, sent to bring horses
to be loaded with the spoil. Alfgar listened intently to gain
information, and heard enough to show that the Danes had been
disappointed in some way, probably in their thirst for blood.

"But how could they have known we were coming? We have marched through
a hundred miles of the most desolate country we could find, and have
come faster than any one could have carried the information."

Such seemed to be the substance of the complaint of the warriors on
guard, from which Alfgar felt justified in believing in the escape of
the theows, and the consequent deliverance of the people, if