Thorleif had told me how he had come from Wales
round the Land's End to Weymouth. I thought rightly that he had
picked up Erling there.

I had a good hour's swim in a deep pool of the river, and enjoyed
it to the full. The current was swift, and it was good to battle
with it, and then to turn and swing downward past the fern-covered
banks and under the shade of the trees with its flow. And while I
was splashing in the pool, a franklin came running from his field
with his hoe, waving wildly to me.

"Come out, master, I pray you!" he gasped; "the water is full forty
feet deep there!"

"Is that so?" I said gravely. "I will go and see."

With that I dived, and stayed under as long as I could, not being
able to find the bottom after all.

And when I came up again the honest face of the franklin was white
and his eyes stared in terror. So I laughed at him.

"I believe the pool is as deep as you say; but would seven feet of
water be any safer?"

"Nay, master, but it would drown me. Yet come out, I do pray you.
It gives me the cold terror to see you so overbold."

Then came Father Selred along the bank, and the man begged him to
bid me leave the water; and so we both laughed at him, until the
franklin waxed cross and went his way, saying that I was a fool for
not biding in the shoal water up yonder by the great tree. I could
walk across there waist deep, he said, grumbling.

Then I came out, and the father told me that the king would be here
anon. We walked to and fro waiting for him, and presently he came
with Hilda's father, Sighard, in attendance. The four of us sat
down on the river bank, under the great tree of which the franklin
had spoken, and watched the trout in the shallows till Ethelbert
lay back with his arms under his head, and said that he was tired
with the ride and would sleep.

He closed his eyes, and we went on talking in low voices for an
hour or so while he slept. And then the horns rang from the distant
camp to tell us that the evening meal was spread in the great
pavilion. But the king did not hear them, and I looked doubtfully
at him, wondering if he should be waked.

"Wilfrid," said Father Selred in a whisper, "surely the king dreams
wondrous things. His face is as the face of a saint!"

And so indeed it was as he lay there in the evening light, and I
wondered at him. There was no smile around his mouth, but stillness
and, as it seemed, an awe of what he saw, most peaceful, so that I
alm