seemed harder to me to leave these hills
and combes that I loved than it had seemed overnight; and at last I
thought I would traverse them once again, and so make to the headland,
above Watchet and Quantoxhead on either side, and then down along the
shore, always deserted there, to the hills above Minehead, by skirting
round Watchet, and so on into the great and lonely moors beyond, where I
could go into house or hamlet without fear of being known.

Then I remembered that to seek help in the villages must be to ask
charity. That would be freely given, doubtless, but would lead to
questions, and, moreover, my pride forbade me to ask in that way. Then,
again, for a man so subsisting it might be hard to win a way to a great
man's favour, though, indeed, a stout warrior was always sure to find
welcome with him who had lands to protect, but not so certainly with the
other housecarles among whom he would come.

So I began to see that my plight was worse than I thought, and sat
there, with my back to an ash tree, while the birds sang round me, and
was downcast for a while.

Then suddenly, as I traced the course that I had laid out in my mind,
going over the hunts of the old days, when I rode beside my father and
since, I bethought me of one day when the stag, a great one of twelve
points, took to the sea just this side of Watchet town, swimming out
bravely into Severn tide, so that we might hardly see him from the
strand. There went out three men in a little skiff to take him, having
with them the young son of the owner of the boat. And in some way the
boat was overturned, as they came back towing the stag after them, when
some hundred or more yards from shore, and in deep water where a swift
current ran. Two men clung to the upturned boat; but the other must
swim, holding up his son, who, though a big boy of fourteen, was
helpless in the water. And I saw that it was like to go hard with both
of them, for the current bore them away from shore and boat alike.

So I rode in, and my horse swam well, and we reached them in time, so
that I took the boy by his long hair and raised him above the water,
while the man, his father, swam beside us, and we got safely back to the
beach, they exhausted enough but safe, and I pleased that my good horse
did so well.

But the man would have it that I and not the horse saved his son, and
was most grateful, bidding me command him in anything all his life long,
even to life itself, saying th