re had gone altogether, and he yelled with rage and sprang
forward. After him came his men, and in a moment the two parties
were hand to hand.

Then was fighting such as the gleemen sing of, with the light of
the red fire waxing and waning across the courtyard the while. The
strange lights and shadows it cast were to the advantage of our men
for a little while, but the numbers were too great against them for
that to be of much avail. Soon they who had not fallen were borne
back to the hall door, and there stood again, but my father was not
with them.

He fell at the first, as Owen tells me. Another has told me that
Owen stood across his body and would have fallen with him, but that
Stuf drew him away, calling on him to mind his promise concerning
me, and so he went back, still fighting, until he stood in the door
of the hall.

There Erpwald and his men stayed their hands, like a ring of dogs
that bay a boar. There was a little porch, so that they could not
get at him sideways, and needs must that they fell on him one at a
time. It seemed that not one cared to be the first to go near the
terrible Briton as he stood, in the plain arms and with the heavy
sword my father had given him, waiting for them. Well do I know
what he was like at that time, and I do not blame them. There is no
man better able to wield weapons than he, and they had learnt it.

Then the light of the straw stack went out suddenly, as a stack
fire will, and the darkness seemed great. Yet from the well-lit
hall a path of light came past Owen and fell on his foes, so that
he could well see any man who was bold enough to come, and they
held back the more.

There were but six men of ours in the house behind Owen.

Then came Erpwald, leaning, sorely wounded, on one of his men, and
Owen spoke to him.

"You have wrought enough harm, Erpwald, for this once. Let the rest
of the household go in peace."

"Harm?" groaned the heathen. "Whose fault is it? How could I think
that the fool would have resisted?"

"As there are fifty men in the yard at this moment, it seems that
you were sure of it," answered Owen in a still voice. "If you knew
it not before, now at least you know that a Christian thinks his
faith worth dying for."

Now, whether it was his wound, or whether he saw that he had gone
too far, Erpwald bethought himself, and seemed minded to make
terms.

"I wish to slay no more," he said. "Yield yourselves quietly, and
no harm shall come to yo