rounding country. Presently they came to a
cottage. A man came out.

"What do you seek?" he asked.

"You have fugitives in refuge here," Edmund said. "Know you if among
them is our good King Alfred?" The man looked astonished.

"A pretty place to seek for a king!" he replied. "There are a few
Saxons in hiding here. Some live by fishing, some chop wood; but for
the most part they are an idle and thriftless lot, and methinks have
fled hither rather to escape from honest work or to avoid the penalties
of crimes than for any other reason."

"How may we find them?" Edmund asked.

"They are scattered over the island. There are eight or ten dwellers
here like myself, and several of them have one or more of these fellows
with them; others have built huts for themselves and shift as they can;
but it is a hard shift, I reckon, and beech-nuts and acorns, eked out
with an occasional fish caught in the streams, is all they have to live
upon. I wonder that they do not go back to honest work among their
kinsfolk."

"Ah!" Edmund said, "you do not know here how cruel are the ravages of
the Danes; our homes are broken up and our villages destroyed, and
every forest in the land is peopled with fugitive Saxons. Did you know
that you would speak less harshly of those here. At any rate the man I
seek is young and fair-looking, and would, I should think"--and he
smiled as he remembered Alfred's studious habits--"be one of the most
shiftless of those here."

"There is such a one," the man replied, "and several times friends of
his have been hither to see him. He dwells at my next neighbour's, who
is often driven well-nigh out of her mind--for she is a dame with a
shrewish tongue and sharp temper--by his inattention. She only asks of
him that he will cut wood and keep an eye over her pigs, which wander
in the forest, in return for his food; and yet, simple as are his
duties, he is for ever forgetting them. I warrant me, the dame would
not so long have put up with him had he not been so fair and helpless.
However bad-tempered a woman may be, she has always a tender corner in
her heart for this sort of fellow. There, you can take this path
through the trees and follow it on; it will take you straight to her
cottage."

The description given by the man tallied so accurately with that of the
king that Edmund felt confident that he was on the right track. The
fact, too, that from time to time men had come to see this person added
to the pr