others in better words than I can
compass; and Harek, whom they call "King Alfred's Scald" nowadays,
has made song of what he has seen at my side in English waters; and
more he may have to make yet, for the North has not yet sent forth
all her hosts. Only I will say this, that if we have not been
altogether able to stay the coming of new Danish fleets to the long
seaboard that must needs lie open to them here and there till our
own fleets are greater, at least they know that the host may no
longer come and go as they will, for Alfred's ships have to be
reckoned with.

Now of ourselves I will add that Thora and I have many friends, but
the best and closest are those whom we made in the days when Hubba
came and fell under the shadow of the Quantock Hills, and they do
not forget us.

Into our house sometimes come Heregar and Ethered, Denewulf the
wise and humble, Odda, and many more, sure of welcome. Only the
loved presence of Neot the holy is wanting, for he died in Cornwall
in that year of the end of the troubles, and I think that in him I
lost more than any save Alfred himself.

Osmund went back to East Anglia for a time, but there he grew
wearied with the wrangling of the Danish chiefs as they shared out
the new land between them; so he bides with us, finding all his
pleasure in the life of farm and field, which is ever near to the
heart of a Dane. With him goes old Thord, grumbling at the thralls
in strange sea language, and yet well loved. Not until he was
wounded sorely in a sea fight we had and won under the Isle of
Wight would he leave the war deck; but even now he is the first on
board when the ships come home, and he is the one who orders all
for winter quarters or for sailing.

Now for long I would that I might look once more on Einar of the
Orkneys, my kind foster father, who still bided there in peace,
hearing of him now and then as some Norse ship, on her way to join
Rolf's fleet in the new land of the Northmen beyond our narrow
seas, put into our haven for repair, perhaps after the long voyage,
or to see if King Alfred would hire her men for a cruise against
the common foe--the Danes. And it was not until the news of his
death came thus to me that the home longing for the old lands
altogether left me; but since that day my thoughts have been, and
will be, for England only. I have no thought or wish that I were
sharer in Rolf's victories, nor have my comrades, Harek and Kolgrim
and Thord; for we have