seeing nor hearing aught. If there were
Welsh to be fought, I would fight beside you all, gladly, for
Alfred; but as the war is against my own folk, I can do nothing. I
will neither fight for them nor fight against them; for King Alfred
and you, my friend, gave me life, and it is yours. I think that
some day I may be of use to Alfred in helping to bring about a
lasting peace."

"If we find him," I said.

"Ay, you will find him. He is hiding now for some wise reason that
we shall know. I think it is not known how his plans are feared by
our folk. I am sure that of this midwinter march the Danes will say
that it is worthy of Alfred himself."

Nevertheless we heard nothing of him, though the thane had men out
everywhere trying to gain news. All that they heard was the same
tale of dismay from whoever they might meet, and I think that but
for a chance we should not have found him until he chose to come
forth from his refuge.

Heregar the thane had a strange serving man, the same who had
ridden with him and me to meet the Danish forces; and this man was
a fenman from Sedgemoor, who knew all the paths through the wastes.
Lean and loose-limbed he was, and somewhat wild looking, mostly
silent; but where his lord went he went also. They said that he had
saved the thane's life more than once in the great battles about
Reading, when the Danish host first came.

This man was out daily, seeking news with the rest; and one day,
just a week after we had come to Cannington, when the frost had
bound everything fast again, he came home and sought his master.

Heregar and I and Osmund sat together silently before the fire, and
he looked from one to the other of us outlanders.

"Speak out, Dudda," said Heregar, who knew his ways; "here are none
but friends."

"Ay, friends of ours sure enough; but are they the king's?"

"Most truly so. Have you news of him?"

"I have not; but I have heard some fenmen talking."

Then Osmund rose up and went his way silently, as was his wont; and
Dudda grinned at us.

"He is a good Dane," he said; "now I can speak. They say there is
some great lord hiding in the fens beyond the round hill where Tone
and Parret join, that we call the Stane--somewhere by Long Hill,
they say. Now I mind that one day when the king rode with you
across the Petherton heights, he looked out over all the fens, and
called me and asked much of them. And when I told him what he
would, he said, 'Here is a place where a m