Now the land was poorer, but in peace. Yet Hertha would keep in
hiding till we might see how things went, for the Danes might be
forced back, and when a Danish host retreats it hinders pursuit by
leaving a desert in its wake. Many a long year will it be before
those Danish pathways are lost to sight again. They seem to be
across every shire of our land.

So I lived on in Ethelred's court now in one town and now in
another, as the long struggle bade us shift either to follow or fly
the Danes; and presently the memory both of my mother and Hertha
grew dim, for wartime and new scenes age and harden a youth very
quickly. Soon I might ride at the side of Eadmund the Atheling to
try to stay the march of Swein through England; and many were the
fights I saw with him, until I was the only one left of all the
youths who had been my comrades at first, and Eadmund had won his
name of "Ironside" in bravest hopeless struggle.

I grew to be a close and trusted friend of his, and so at last
amidst the trouble that was all round us in those heavy times the
remembrance of Hertha became but as part of a childhood that was
long gone, and I thought of her but as of the little one with whom
I had played in the old days beside the quiet Stour. There were
none left to remind me of her, for one by one my few Bures men had
fallen, and Edred, who had been my servant at the court, gave his
life for mine in my first battle. Into Swein's East Anglia our
levies never made their way.

What need for me to say aught of those three years of warfare?
Their tale is written in fire over all the fair face of England.
For nothing checked Swein Forkbeard until step by step the Danish