this remembrance.

But Ailwin came not, and I grew impatient, and went to the cottage
where he dwelt as the leech, at the head of the little street
towards our hall. Maybe he would be there.

The door was open, and the little black cat that had been the
leech's in the old days, and would not leave its house, sat in the
sun on the step. I went inside and called, but there was no man.
And then a footstep came from the road and in at the wicket, and a
strange priest, younger than Ailwin, and frocked and cowled came
in.

He saluted me gravely, and I bowed to him, and then he asked me
where Redwald the thane might be found.

"I am he, father," I said.

"Then I have a message to you from Ailwin, your priest, whose place
I am sent to take for a time."

"This is his house, father," I answered. "Let us come in and hear
what he would tell me."

So we sat down inside the one room on the bench across the wall,
and I wondered what I should hear.

"I will give my message first," the priest said, "and afterwards
you shall tell me Ailwin's ways with your people, and I will try to
be as himself with them."

I laughed a little, though I was pleased, and answered:

"You cannot do that, father--for he has christened everyone in the
parish that is thirty years younger than he.

"Aye, I forgot that," the priest said gravely. "They will miss him
sorely. Therefore I will say that he will return ere long, but that
my ways must be borne with until he comes."

"Now I think that if you steer between those two sayings of yours
you will do well," I answered.

"Ailwin's ways wrought in my manner, therefore. I thank you,
thane," the priest said. "I am cloister bred, and know nought much
of secular work. Now, that is enough about myself. This morning,
very early, came Ailwin and asked for one to take his place, and I
am a Dane of the old settlement, and so I came, as running less
risk if Cnut returns, as they say he will. Then Ailwin bade me seek
you and say this. That because of the wandering Danes he would take
his charges into some more quiet place for a time at least. Truly,
he bade me tell you, they have a last refuge where none would find
them, but it is ill fitted for a long stay, and it is likely that
once there it might now be months before they could leave it. So he
and Gunnhild think best to go far off. They will return with peace,
and then he bids me tell you that, if the Lord will, all shall be
well."

"Where will he g