turned out to be a monastery, where we were most welcome.
And there we bid farewell to the Danes, not without regret, for we
had been good comrades on the voyage. There was a great difference
between these crews of men from one village under their own chief,
and the terrible swarms of men, gathered none knows whence, and
with little heed to their leaders save in battle, which came in
after years. We saw the Dane at his best.

Now after that the good abbot of the place passed us on from town
to town until at last we came to Herulstad, where Carl the mighty
lay with his army, still watching and fighting the heathen Saxons
of the Rhinelands. And there Ecgbert was welcomed in all
friendliness, and our wanderings were at an end. Even the arm of
Quendritha could not reach the atheling here, though Carl and Offa
were friendly, and messengers came and went between the two courts
from time to time.

In that way I had messages sent home at last, and my mind was at
rest. It was, however, nearly a year before my folk heard of me, as
I learned afterward. But close on five years of warfare lay before
me ere I should set foot on English ground again.

CHAPTER IV. HOW WILFRID MET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN NORWICH MARKET.

Looking back on them, it seems that those five years with Carl the
Great were long, but in truth they went fast enough. With Ecgbert I
went everywhere that war was to be waged, whether on the still half
heathen, unwillingly christened Saxons, who were our own kin of the
old land; or across on the opposite frontier, where the terrible
Moors of Spain had not yet forgotten Roncesvalles. For us it was
fighting, and always fighting, and little of that most splendid
court of the king did we see; for Ecgbert had set himself to learn
all that he might, and he was not one to do things by halves. Nor
had I any wish to be anywhere but near him.

They were good years, therefore, if we had our share of danger and
hardship to the full, and must needs bear the marks of it ever
after. Once I was sorely wounded, and Ecgbert tended me through
that as a brother rather than as my lord--even as I would have
tended him, only that he was never hurt. Some of us grew to think
that he had a charmed life; but I thought that he was kept for the
sake of what was to be in days to come, when England was worn out
with warfare between the kingdoms, and would welcome a strong hand
over her from north to south.

I know not whether it was Car