like of this.
Then came Harek's voice outside, where he hung up fish to freeze
against the morrow; and he sang softly some old saga of the fishing
for the Midgard snake by Asa Thor. And that grated on me, though I
ever waited to hear what song the blithe scald had to fit what was
on hand, after his custom. Alfred heard too, and he glanced at me,
and I was fain to hang my head.
"Ranald, who brought to pass the sign, shall surely share in its
bodings of good," he said, quickly and kindly. "I think that he is
highly favoured."
Then in came my comrades, and they bent to the king, and he thanked
them; and after that was supper and much cheerfulness. Harek sang,
and Alfred, and after them Denewulf. Much I marvelled at the wisdom
of this strange man, but I never knew how he gained it. King Alfred
was ever wont to say that in him he had found his veriest
counsellor against despair in that dark time; and when in after
days he took him from the fen and made him a bishop, he filled the
place well and wisely, being ever the same humble-minded man that I
had known in Athelney {xiv}.
Chapter X. Athelney and Combwich.
In the morning King Alfred took us to the southern end of his
island, and there told us what his plans were. And as we listened
they seemed to us to be wiser than mortal mind could have made, so
simple and yet so sure were they, as most great plans will be. It
is no wonder that his people hold that he was taught them from
above.
He bade us look across the fens to the wooded heights of Selwood
Forest, to south and east, and to the bold spur of the Polden Hills
beyond the Parret that they call Edington. There was nought but fen
and river and marsh between them and us--"impassable by the Danes
who prowled there. Only at the place where the two rivers join was
a steep, rounded hill, that stood up strangely from the level--the
hill that they call the Stane, on Stanmoor; and there were other
islands like this on which we stood, unseen among the thickets, or
so low that one might not know of them until upon them.
"Now," he said, "sooner or later the Danes will know I am here,
where they cannot reach me. Therefore I will keep them watching
this place until I can strike them a blow that will end the trouble
once for all. They will be sure that we gather men on the Quantock
side, whence Heregar can keep them; and so, while they watch for us
to attack them thence, we will gather beyond Selwood, calling all
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