er V. Osberne Slays the Wolves

As to Osberne, I will say nought of him till he comes back in the
even, driving all his sheep before him, not one lacking, and two of
the lost ones found. He bears with him shield and spear, and has the
Dwarf-wrought whittle in his girdle. Over his shoulder to boot he
carries a biggish bag, well-nigh big enough for so little a carle; of
white linen it is, it hath something heavy in it, and is much stained
with blood. So he folds the sheep straightway, and then comes into the
hall, he and his bag, and throws the same into the ingle of the hearth
fire. Then he casts a sack over his shoulders and sits before the bag,
so that it may not be lightly seen. By this time, it was dusking
outside, and inside the hall it was pretty much dark save for the
fire, where little flames leapt up now and again as some piece of the
firing tumbled over. In the hall was no one, for the women were
bringing in the kine, and the goodman was not yet come in from the
field.

There he sits quietly, stirring little. And the next tidings is, the
goodman comes home alone; he hears the sheep a-bleating, and goes glad
at heart to the fold; and there is his joy eked, for by the light of
the moon, which is now rising, he can see well enough to tell over the
sheep, and finds two more than there were yesterday. So he goes
speedily toward the hall, and the women now come up after him, having
gotten the kine into the byre; so they all three go into the hall
together.

Then cries out the goodman: "Is there aught in the hall now?" Osberne
answers from where he sat: "There is but little, for I am little."
Then they turn and see him hugging himself up in the sack, and
something at his back, they cannot see what; and the goodman says:
"What hast thou been about all day, kinsman? Thou art forever
foolhardy and a truant; of right, stripes should pay the for thy
straying." Said Osberne: "I have been shepherding sheep; may it not
buy me off the stripes that I have found two of the lost ones, and
brought back all safe?" "Maybe," says the master; "but did aught else
befal thee?" Says the lad: "Will it not buy me off beating that I have
also brought home good catch?"

"Yea, if the catch be good," says the goodman. "It is but a leash of
snipes, which I got me in a corner of the bog up yonder," says
Osberne. "Snipes!" says Bridget; "deft art thou, fosterling, to take
them without either springe or stonebow, and they all flittering like