"Let him have the lad for his share of the night's work," he said.

And so God gave me the poor lad's life.

I had scarcely time to lay him on a sloping bank, where the light
which shone so luridly from his burning home might fall upon him, when
my brother Elfwyn appeared on the scene with a score of his men.

He recognised us by our habits, and came and looked with me at the
orphan as he lay on the bank. The boy had received no serious wound,
but was exhausted, as much I thought by the violence of his emotions
as by his injuries. He was wet through; his clothes were torn with
brambles, for he had followed a straight path through six miles of
tangled forest, from Aescendune.

They had unfortunately given him a bed in a chamber which looked
towards his home: he had chanced to wake, had looked from the window,
seen the flames, and had started thither at once, swimming the moat
when he could not cross the drawbridge--suspecting, doubtless, that he
was surrounded by treachery.

I had already poured a rich cordial down his throat, and he was coming
to himself, my brother aiding me, when the sheriff, grand in his robe
and chain of office, came up.

"Good day, or rather night, to you, Thane of Aescendune," said he to
Elfwyn; "we have had a fair night's work, and destroyed a big wasp's
nest; have you come for your share in the spoil?"