prevent
my going on quickly, for I knew the ground well enough, by reason of
yearly bird nesting. When I reached the roadway the meeting place was
yet to my left, and I could hear my father's footsteps coming steadily
in the distance. So I skirted the road for a little way, and then came
to an open bit of heath and rising land, beyond which I thought I should
find Hodulf. Up this I ran quickly, dropping into the heather at the
top; and sure enough, in a hollow just off the road I could dimly make
out the figure of a mounted man waiting.

Then my father came along the road past me, and I crawled among the tall
heather clumps until I was not more than twenty paces from the hollow,
which was a little below me.

Hodulf's horse winded me, as I think, and threw up its head snorting,
and I heard its bit rattle. But my father was close at hand, and that
was lucky.

"Ho, fisher, is that you?" he called softly.

"I am here," was the answer, and at once my father came into the hollow
from the road.

"Are any folk about?" Hodulf said.

"I have met none. Now, what is all this business?" answered my father.

"Business that will make a free man of you for the rest of your days,
and rich, moreover, master thrall," said Hodulf. "That is, if you do as
I bid you."

"A thrall can do naught else than what he is bidden."

"Nay, but he can do that in a way that will earn great reward, now and
then; and your reward for obedience and silence thereafter in this
matter shall be aught that you like to ask."

"This sounds as if I were to peril my life," my father said. "I know
naught else that can be worth so much as that might be."

"There is no peril," said Hodulf scornfully; "your skin shall not be so
much as scratched---ay, and if this is well done it will know a
master's dog whip no more."

I heard my father chuckle with a thrall's cunning laugh at this, and
then he said eagerly, "Well, master, what is it?"

"I will tell you. But first will you swear as on the holy ring that of
what you shall do for me no man shall know hereafter?"

"What I do at your bidding none shall know, and that I swear," answered
my father slowly, as if trying to repeat the king's words.

"See here, then," said Hodulf, and I heard his armour clatter as he
dismounted.

Then the footsteps of both men shuffled together for a little while, and
once I thought I heard a strange sound as of a muffled cry, at which
Hodulf muttered under his breath. I could