o me to be quite enough to explain Uldra's
first refusal, and though I believe that Relf had been on the point
of telling me more, he forbore, and let this suffice.

Relf knew where to look for a beast, and we soon had a good bay
pony, that was quiet enough and strong, sent to Godwine's stables.
And then Relf told the earl what he had done.

"Then I was right," said Godwine gleefully. "I will warrant that
you two wise heads would never have thought thereof."

"Are you coming with us?" I asked him, for I did not care to have
to find answers to many questions about our speech with Uldra, as
things were.

"I am coming by sea presently with two ships," he said. "I shall
wait till Bertric comes back, and so maybe shall have news of your
queen to tell you. He should not be long. Relf goes back for the
early hay time, he says, but I believe that he is tired of the
sea."

"I am no sailor, lord," the thane said.

"As any of my crew will tell you," Godwine said merrily.

"Never, Redwald, was any man so undone as Relf when there is a
little sea on. A common forest deer thief could tie him up."

"I should have thanked one for slaying me at times," said Relf
grimly. "I prefer solid ground to shifty deck planks."

So whether it was love of home or loathing of sea that took him
back to Penhurst, Relf and I left Godwine on the next morning; and
at the nunnery door waited Uldra, looking bright and cheerful and
greeting us gladly as we came. And it seemed to me that her
troubles had passed from her, and that she was indeed glad to be
leaving the walls of the place that was so prison-like.

Now that was a fair and pleasant ride over the Downs and among the
forest paths through Sussex, and I look back on it as the brightest
time that I had had in all the long years of trouble. The joy of
going back to my old home at Bures had been clouded with the
knowledge of loss, and with the sight of the trail of war. But here
were none of these things.

We rode with twenty housecarles of Relf's behind us, and it was a
new thing to me that I should see the wayside folk run out into the
trackway to see us pass; that the farm thralls in the fields should
but rise up, straightening stiffened backs and laughing, and stay
their work for a moment to watch us; that no man who met us should
ask with anxious face, "What news of the Danes?"

New it was, and most pleasant to Uldra also, for she had come
through all the harried land, where the clic