thought he took me for one of those who had bound him.

"Fear not," I said, speaking in Welsh to comfort him.

And if anything, that seemed to terrify him yet more.

"Mercy, good Thane--mercy!" he mumbled from his half-stifled lips.

Then it seemed to me that it was strange that he knew what I was,
and before I cut the bonds I took the cloth from his face, and lo!
the man was Evan the outlaw, my enemy!

That told me why he feared me in good truth, for he had need to do
so, and I stood back and looked at him with the bright weapon still
in my hand, and he cried and begged for mercy unceasingly. It
seemed but right that he should be bound helplessly as he had bound
me, yet he had not the bitterness of seeing a friend look on him
without knowing him as had I. It was a foe whom he saw, and that a
righteous one.

Then I was minded to turn away and leave him where he was, until
the foe from the forest looked on him for the last time, for it was
all that he deserved, and I set my seax back in my belt and turned
away to my horse with a great loathing of the man in my mind; and
seeing that, he begged for mercy again most pitiably.

That is a hard thing to hear unmoved, and I stayed and looked at
him again. My first wrath was leaving me as I saw the fullness of
the end of his plans, and I do not think that it is in me to be
utterly revengeful.