A THANE OF WESSEX

Being a Story of the Great Viking Raids into Somerset

By

CHARLES W. WHISTLER







CHAPTER I. OUTLAWED!


The whole of my story seems to me to begin on the day when I stood,
closely guarded, before my judges, in the great circle of the people at
the Folk Moot of the men of Somerset gathered on the ancient hill of
Brent. All my life before that seems to have been as nothing, so quiet
and uneventful it was compared to what came after. I had grown from
boyhood to manhood in my father's great hall, on the little hill of
Cannington that looks out over the mouth of the river Parret to the blue
hills beyond. And there, when I was but two-and-twenty and long
motherless, I succeeded him as thane, and tried to govern my people as
well and wisely as he, that I too might die loved and honoured as he
died. And that life lasted but three years.

Maybe, being young and headstrong, I spoke at times, when the feasting