"I go to Wormingford," I answered. "Likely enough, therefore, that
I fly last," and I laughed.

"Aye, let me go, master, let me go," he said. "It is like that the
Danes are on the road."

"Not yet," I said, touched by question and offer alike. "There is
many a mile between here and Ipswich, and I think that to go to
Wormingford is my work, surely."

So I rode away fast, seeing in the valley below me the lights of
the house that I sought. As I had said, the errand was indeed mine.

For at the great house just across the river below the hills lived
the one who should be my wife in the days to come--Hertha, daughter
of Osgod, the Thane of Wormingford. It was now three years since we
had been betrothed with all solemnity in our church, and that had
seemed but fit and right, for we were two children who had played
together since we could run hand in hand. And my mother had been as
a mother also to little Hertha since she was left with only her
father to tend her.

Our house and Osgod's were akin, though not near, for we both
traced our line from Redwald the first Christian king of East
Anglia, whose name I bore. Hertha was two years younger than I.

Now Osgod the Thane had ridden away to the war with my father, and
unless he had returned with Grinkel, Hertha was alone in the house
with her old nurse and the farm servants. Most surely she would
have been at Bures with us but for some spring-time sickness which