wn woke me, without so much as stirring.

CHAPTER XVIII. HOW JEFAN THE PRINCE GUARDED HIS GUESTS.

In the stir which comes with the waking of a camp, I and Erling
went out of the eastward gate and watched the sun coming up over
the Mercian hills across the river. The white morning mists lay
deep and heavy below us, and the little breeze from the southwest
drifted curls of it up the hill and across it, mixed with the smell
of the newly-lighted fires; and as the sun touched the drifts they
vanished. In the cattle enclosures the beasts moved restless and
ghostlike, lowing for their home meadows after the night on the
open hillside. Jefan had ridden out to go round his posts, and I
was waiting to bid Hilda good morrow before breakfast.

"What shall you do next?" asked Erling, with his eyes on the misty
treetops below us.

He was silent beyond his wont this morning, and I did not wonder at
it.

"I can hardly say. I have thought that by-and-by, when Sighard is
fit to move hence, we might get to one of the Welsh ports, and so
cross into my own land, Wessex, unknown to any in all Mercia."

Erling nodded.

"That is good," he said. "I only wish we were a trifle farther from
the Wye now, or that we had a few more men."

"You think that Gymbert is still to be feared?"

"T know it. Unless we get hence shortly we shall be fallen on. The
reeve told me that he could gather five-score men of the worst sort
in a day by the raising of his finger."

"It would need men of the best to take this place."

"Outlaws and suchlike I meant--men who will have Gymbert's promise
of inlawing again if they will do his bidding. See, here comes
Jefan!"

Up the hill from out of the mists rode the prince, and with him ran
a few of his men, swiftly as mountain men will, so that the horse
was no swifter up the steep. After them, through the mist, from men
I could not see, sped an arrow, badly aimed, which fell short, and
told of danger.

One of the two men who were at the gate on guard turned and
whistled, and the rest, busy over their cooking, dropped what they
held and ran to their weapons. Kynan came hastily to us, and
watched his brother as he rode up.

"Jefan is in a hurry," he said. "Get your arms, thane, for there
must be reason. Mayhap it is naught, however, for one is easily
scared in a fog."

Still he was anxious; for if he had looked at me he would have seen
that I was already armed, and that so also was Erling. We needed