"Let me be of some use, rather," Owen answered. "If I bide with
you, Thane, and I thank you for the offer, let it be as I have
bided elsewhere from time to time--as one of the household, not as
an idle guest, if it were but to help the woodmen in the forest."

"Why, that will be well. I need a forester, and it is plain that
you are a master of woodcraft. Let it be so. Yet I must tell you
one thing fairly, and that is, that I am what you would call a
heathen. I know that you are a good Christian man, for I saw you
sign your holy sign before you ate last night and this morning. Yet
I do not hate Christians."

"I had heard that all Sussex was turned to the faith," Owen said.

"If one says that all the men have gone to market, one knows that
here and there one is excepted for good reason. It is not for a
thane of the line of Woden to give up the faith of his fathers
idly. I do not know what may be in the days to come, but here in
the Andredsweald some dozen of us will not leave the old gods. It
was the bidding of Ethelwalch the king that we should do so, but
that is not a matter wherein a king may meddle, as it seems to us."

"I do not know why I should not bide with you, Thane, if so be that
there is no hindrance to my faith."

"That there will be none. Why, the most of my folk are Christian
enough. And if a man of the Britons did not honour his old faith it
would be as strange as if I honoured not that of my fathers. I have
no quarrel with the faith of any man, either king or thrall."