n simple concealment, but as a garrison, weak, it is true, but
still gathering strength, and advancing gradually toward a condition
which would enable them to make positive aggressions upon the enemy.

The circumstance which occurred to hasten the development of Alfred's
plans, and which was briefly alluded to at the close of the last
chapter, was the following: It seems that quite a large party of
Danes, under the command of a leader named Hubba, had been making a
tour of conquest and plunder in Wales, which country was on the other
side of the Bristol Channel, directly north of Ethelney, where Alfred
was beginning to concentrate a force. He would be immediately exposed
to an attack from this quarter as soon as it should be known that he
was at Ethelney, as the distance across the Channel was not great, and
the Danes were provided with shipping.

Ethelney was in the county called Somersetshire. To the southwest
of Somersetshire, a little below it, on the shores of the Bristol
Channel, was a castle, called Castle Kenwith, in Devonshire. The
Duke of Devonshire, who held this castle, encouraged by Alfred's
preparations for action, had assembled a considerable force here, to
be ready to co-operate with Alfred in the active measures which he was
about to adopt. Things being in this state, Hubba brought down his
forces to the northern shores of the Channel, collected together all
the boats and shipping that he could command, crossed the Channel,
and landed on the Devonshire shore. Odun, the duke, not being strong
enough to resist, fled, and shut himself up, with all his men, in the
castle. Hubba advanced to the castle walls, and, sitting down before
them, began to consider what to do.

Hubba was the last surviving son of Ragner Lodbrog, whose deeds and
adventures were related in a former chapter. He was, like all other
chieftains among the Danes, a man of great determination and energy,
and he had made himself very celebrated all over the land by his
exploits and conquests. His particular horde of marauders, too, was
specially celebrated among all the others, on account of a mysterious
and magical banner which they bore. The name of this banner was the
_Reafan_, that is, the Raven. There was the figure of a raven woven
or embroidered on the banner. Hubba's three sisters had woven it for
their brothers, when they went forth across the German Ocean to avenge
their father's death. It possessed, as both the Danes and Saxons
b