hands of women and children. Such joy as befitted the absence of their
lords was theirs, and Alfgar and Bertric, not to waste the holiday,
agreed to have a day's hunting in the forest, rich with all the hues
of autumn, while the feast was preparing at home.

The day was delightful. Two young theows, whose fathers had gone to
the war, but who had been left behind as being too young to share its
dangers, although in the flush of early youth, accompanied them, and
were soon loaded with the lighter game their masters had killed, while
a deer they had slain was hung in the trees, where a wolf could not
reach it, and where wayfarers were not likely to pass until the
sportsmen should return for their own. Onward they wandered until the
sun was declining, and then, having some few miles of forest to
thread, and the deer to send for, they turned on their homeward way.

No thought of any danger was on their minds that day. The Danes were
too far distant. They were more than a hundred miles from the seat of
war, and a hundred miles in those days meant more than five hundred
would mean now.

About the hour of five they rested and bathed in a tributary of the
Avon. Bertric's spirits were very high: he laughed and talked like one
whose naturally ardent temperament was stimulated by the bracing
atmosphere and the exercise. His active and handsome frame, bright
with all the attractions of youth, was equal to any amount of woodland
toil; and Alfgar, who was, as we have said, deeply attached to his
companion, felt proud of his younger brother, as he delighted to call
him, and Bertric loved to be called so. Alfgar trusted some day to
have a yet better claim to the title.