which he could not go, had kept our great King Kenwalch from
pushing Wessex yet westward, and along their line had been our
frontier since his days until, not long before Ina came to the
throne, Kentwine crossed them to the north and cleared the
marauding Welsh of the Quantock hills and forests from the river to
the sea, setting honest Saxon franklins here and there in the
new-won land, to keep it for him. It was out of those deep wooded
hills that Morgan had come on the raid that ended so badly for his
brother and himself, for the wasted country was yet a sort of
no-man's land, where outlaws found easy harbourage, coming mostly
from the Welsh side. It would not need much to set the tide of war
moving westward again, now that our men knew the fenland as well as
ever the British learned the secrets of the paths.

Now that the time seemed to have come for him to leave Ina, Owen
feared most of all that the long peace would end, for that would
mean the rending of old friendships and certain parting from me.
How much longer the peace would last was very doubtful, and men
said that it was only the wisdom of Aldhelm that had kept it so
well, and now he was dead. It was not so long since that a west
Welshman would not so much as eat with a Saxon, so great was the
hatred they had for us, though that had worn off more or less.
Maybe it would have passed altogether but that there were the
differences between the ways of the two Churches which were always
cropping up and making things bitter again, and those were the
troubles that Aldhelm, whom Gerent honoured, had most tried to
smooth away with some sort of success. Yet it was well known that
many of the Welsh priests and people were sorely against peace with
the men who followed the way of Austin of Canterbury.