Canute did not hold his kingdom in peace. Ethelred sent his son across
the Channel into England to negotiate with the Anglo-Saxon powers for
his own restoration to the throne. An arrangement was accordingly made
with them, and Ethelred returned, and a violent civil war immediately
ensued between Ethelred and the Anglo-Saxons on the one hand, and
Canute and the Danes on the other. At length Ethelred fell, and his
son Edmund, who was at the time of his death one of his generals,
succeeded him. Emma and his two other sons had been left in Normandy.
Edmund carried on the war against Canute with great energy. One of his
battles was fought in the county of Warwick, in the heart of England,
where the peasant Godwin lived. In this battle the Danes were
defeated, and the discomfited generals fled in all directions from the
field wherever they saw the readiest hope of concealment or safety.
One of them, named Ulf,[1] took a by-way, which led him in the
direction of Godwin's father's farm.

Night came on, and he lost his way in a wood. Men, when flying under
such circumstances from a field of battle, avoid always the public
roads, and seek concealment in unfrequented paths, where, they easily
get bewildered and lost. Ulf wandered about all night in the forest,
and when the morning came he found himself exhausted with fatigue,
anxiety, and hunger, certain to perish unless he could find some
succor, and yet dreading the danger of being recognized as a Danish
fugitive if he were to be discovered by any of the Saxon inhabitants
of the land. At length he heard the shouts of a peasant who was coming
along a solitary pathway through the wood, driving a herd to their
pasture. Ulf would gladly have avoided him if he could have gone on
without succor or help. His plan was to find his way to the Severn,
where some Danish ships were lying, in hopes of a refuge on board
of them. But he was exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and utterly