CHAPTER III.  BY BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE.

I had never been into Sedgemoor before, and so went straight on as I could, only turning aside from swampy places while the light lasted.  Then I must wait for the moon to rise, and I sat me down under an old thorn tree on a little rise where I could see about me.  I had come out of the woods, and all the moor was open to the west and south so far as I could see.  I knew that the place was haunted of evil spirits, and shunned at night time by all:  but now I was not afraid of them—­or indeed of anything, save the wolves.  The terror of the man I had left had put that fear into my head, or I think that, desperate as I was, only the sound of a pack of them in full cry would have warned me.  Still, I had heard no more since that one howled an hour ago.

Cold mists rose from the marsh, and in them I could see lights flitting.  A month or two ago I should have feared them, thinking of Beowulf, son of Hygelac, and what befell him and his comrades from the marsh fiends, Grendel and his dam.  Now I watched them, and half longed for a fight like Beowulf’s. [iv]

At last the moon rose behind me, and I walked on.  Once a vast shape rose up in the mist and walked beside me, and I half drew my sword on it.  But that, too, drew sword, and I knew it for my own shadow on the thick vapour.  Then a sheet of water stretched out almost under my feet, and thousands of wildfowl rose and fled noisily, to fall again into further pools with splash and mighty clatter.  I must skirt this pool, and so came presently to a thicket of reeds, shoulder high, and out of these rose, looking larger than natural in the moonlight, a great wild boar that had his lair there, and stood staring at me before he too made off, grunting as he went.

So I went on aimless.  The night was full of sounds, but whether earthly; from wildfowl and bittern and curlew, from fox, and badger, and otter; or from the evil spirits of the marsh, I knew not nor cared.  For now the long imprisonment and the day’s terrible doings, and the little food I had had since we halted on the hill of Brent, all began to get hold of me, and I stumbled on as a man in a bad dream.

But nothing harmed or offered to harm me.  Only when some root or twisted tussock of grass would catch my foot and hinder me I cursed it for being in league with Matelgar, tearing my way fiercely over or through it.  And at last, I think, my mind wandered.

Then I saw a red light that glowed close under the edge of some thick woodland, where the land rose, and that drew me.  It was the hut of a charcoal burner, and the light came from the kiln close by, which was open, and the man himself was standing at it, even now taking out a glowing heap of the coal to cool, before he piled in fresh wood and closed it for the night.

When I saw the hut, it suddenly came on me that I was wearied out, and must sleep, and so went thither.  The collier heard the clank of my armour, and turned round in the crimson light of the glowing coals to see what came.  As he saw me standing he cried aloud in terror, and, throwing up his hands, fled into the dark beyond the kiln, calling on the saints to protect him.