ce where we should bide. And it
might have been worse; for all the level country between us and the
hills was fat, green meadow and marsh, on which were many cattle and
sheep feeding. Here and there were groves of great trees, hemmed in with
the quickset fences that are as good as stockades for defence round the
farmsteads of the English folk, and on other patches of rising ground
were the huts of thralls or herdsmen, and across the wide meadows
glittered and flashed streams and meres, above which the wildfowl that
the storm had driven inland wheeled in clouds. All the lower hills
seemed to be wooded thickly, and the alder copses that would shelter
boar and deer and maybe wolves stretched in some places thence across
the marsh. Pleasant and homely seemed all this after long looking at the
restless sea.

Then said my father, "Now am I no longer Grim the merchant, and that
pride of mine is at an end. But here is a place where Grim the fisher
may do well enough, if I am any judge of shore and sea. Here have we
haven for the boats, and yonder swim the fish, and inland are the towns
that need them. Nor have we seen a sign of a fisher so far as we have come."

Now we had been seen as soon as we stood on the sandhills; and before
long the herdsman and thralls began to gather to us, keeping aloof
somewhat at first, as if fearing my father's arms. But when we spoke
with them we could learn nothing, for they were Welsh marshmen who knew
but little of the tongue of their English masters. Serfs they were now
in these old fastnesses of theirs to the English folk of the
Lindiswaras, who had won their land and called it after their own name,
Lindsey.

But before long there rode from one of the farmsteads an Englishman of
some rank, who had been sent for, as it would seem, and he came with
half a dozen armed housecarls behind him to see what was going on. Him
we could understand well enough, for there is not so much difference
between our tongue and that of the English; and when he learned our
plight he was very kindly. His name was Witlaf Stalling, and he was the
great man of these parts, being lord over many a mile of the marsh and
upland, and dwelling at his own place, Stallingborough, some five miles
to the north and inland hence.

Now it had been in this man's power to seize us and all we had as his
own, seeing that we were cast on his shore; but he treated us as guests
rather, bidding us shelter in one of his near farmsteads