is
what she said:

"What of the Danes, Elfric, my husband? Surely there is risk--aye,
and great risk--of falling into their hands."

Thereat my father laughed easily, and answered:

"Not to an East Anglian ship now; for they have kept the pact we
have made with them. And they watch not our shores for ships, but
the long Frisian and Frankish coasts. There need be no fear of
them."

So my mother was reassured, and in a fortnight's time we had
gathered a mixed cargo, though no great one; and sailed, with a
shift of wind to the southwest, into the Wash, and so put into the
king's haven on its southern shore, where we would leave our goods
with a merchant whom we knew.

On the second day after we came the wind shifted to the eastward,
and then suddenly to the northeast, and blew a gale, so that we
bided in the haven till it was over. For though it was not so heavy
that we could not have won through it in open water with little
harm, it was of no use risking ship and men on a lee shore for
naught.

Our friend, the merchant, kept us with him gladly, and there we
heard the last news of the Danish host, with whom we had made peace
two years since; for nowadays that news had become of the first
interest to every man in all England; though not yet in the right
way. For we had not yet learnt that England must be truly one; and
so long as he himself was unharmed, little cared an East Anglian
what befell Mercian or Northumbrian, even as Wessex or Sussex cared
for naught but themselves. Wherefore, all we longed to know was
that the Danish host was not about to fall on us, being employed
elsewhere.

We had found gain rather than hurt by their coming, for we had, as
I say, made peace with them, and, moreover, sold them horses. Then
they had honestly left our coasts, and had gone to York, and
thereafter to Nottingham. Now Northumbria was theirs, and Mercia
was at their feet. And now again we learnt that they bided in peace
at York, and we were content.

Three days it blew, and then the gale was spent; though the sea
still ran high and swift. So we bade farewell to our friend the
merchant and set sail, and if the passage homewards was rough, it
was swifter than we had hoped.

So it came to pass that we reached the wide inlet of our haven at
the Yare's mouth too soon for the tide to take us in over the sands
which grow and shift every year, and must needs drop anchor in the
roads and wait, with home in sight, hill and church