asture. Ulf would gladly have avoided him if he could have gone on
without succor or help. His plan was to find his way to the Severn,
where some Danish ships were lying, in hopes of a refuge on board
of them. But he was exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and utterly
bewildered and lost; so he was compelled to go forward, and take the
risk of accosting the Saxon stranger.

He accordingly went up to him, and asked him his name. Godwin told him
his name, and the name of his father, who lived, he said, at a little
distance in the wood. While he was answering the question, he gazed
very earnestly at the stranger, and then told him that he perceived
that he was a Dane--a fugitive, he supposed, from the battle. Ulf,
thus finding that he could not be concealed, begged Godwin not to
betray him. He acknowledged that he was a Dane, and that he had made
his escape from the battle, and he wished, he said, to find his way to
the Danish ships in the Severn. He begged Godwin to conduct him there.
Godwin replied by saying that it was unreasonable and absurd for a
Dane to expect guidance and protection from a Saxon.

Ulf offered Godwin all sorts of rewards if he would leave his herd and
conduct him to a place of safety. Godwin said that the attempt, were
he to make it, would endanger his own life without saving that of
the fugitive. The country, he said, was all in arms. The peasantry,
emboldened by the late victory obtained by the Saxon army, were every
where rising; and although it was not far to the Severn, yet to
attempt to reach the river while the country was in such a state
of excitement would be a desperate undertaking. They would almost
certainly be intercepted; and, if intercepted, their exasperated
captors would show no mercy, Godwin said, either to him or to his
guide.

Among the other inducements which Ulf offered to Godwin was a valuable
gold ring, which he took from his finger, and which, he said, should
be his if he would consent to be his guide. Godwin took the ring into
his hand, examined it with much apparent curiosity, and seemed to
hesitate. At length he yielded; though he seems to have been induced
to yield, not by the value of the offered gift, but by compassion for
the urgency of the distress which the offer of it indicated, for he
put the ring back into Ulf's hand, saying that he would not take any
thing from him, but he would try to save him.

Instead, however, of undertaking the apparently hopeless enterpr