has ever been
your father's friend, and will be yours. And I was the queen's
maiden in the old days, and she will welcome me. Now go and bring
Hertha to me."

She turned to her work, and I went out across the courtyard.
Already the wains stood there, the teams of sleepy oxen tossing
their long horns in the glare of torches. The church bell was
clanging the alarm of fire to bring home the men from field or
forest if any were abroad so late, for it was an hour after sunset,
and there was no moon yet.

The gray horse that my father gave me a year agone stood ready
saddled in the stall when I came to the stables. I went and loosed
him, while a groom saw me and ran to help, and as I swung into the
saddle I saw his face marked with new lines across his forehead.

"Do you fly first, master?" he said, with strange meaning in his
voice.

"I go to Wormingford," I answered. "Likely enough, therefore, that
I fly last," and I laughed.

"Aye, let me go, master, let me go," he said. "It is like that the
Danes are on the road."

"Not yet," I said, touched by question and offer alike. "There is
many a mile between here and Ipswich, and I think that to go to
Wormingford is my work, surely."

So I rode away fast, seeing in the valley below me the lights of
the house that I sought. As I had said, the errand was indeed mine.

For at the great house just across the river below the hills lived
the one who should be my wife in the days to come--Hertha, daughter
of Osgod, the Thane of Wormingford. It was now three years since we
had been betrothed with all solemnity in our church, and that had
seemed but fit and right, for we were two children who had played
together since we could run hand in hand. And my mother had been as
a mother also to little Hertha since she was left with only her
father to tend her.

Our house and Osgod's were akin, though not near, for we both
traced our line from Redwald the first Christian king of East
Anglia, whose name I bore. Hertha was two years younger than I.

Now Osgod the Thane had ridden away to the war with my father, and
unless he had returned with Grinkel, Hertha was alone in the house
with her old nurse and the farm servants. Most surely she would
have been at Bures with us but for some spring-time sickness which
was among the village children, and from which my mother sought to
keep her free. It might be that the thane had returned, but it was
in my mind that the manner of Grinkel's comin