Then I was angry with myself, for I could not have been more feared had it been a full pack of wolves; but at last I laughed at my fears, and began to look round the hut in the moonlight.  Soon I had shut and barred the heavy door, and laid myself down to sleep, with a log for pillow.

Though sleep seemed long in coming, it came at last, and it was heavy and dreamless, until the sun shone through the chinks between the logs whereof the hut was built, and I woke.

Then I rose up, opened the door, and looked out on the morning.  The level sunbeams crept through the trees and made everything very fresh and fair, and a little light frost hung over twigs and young fern fronds everywhere, so that I seemed in the land of fairy instead of the Quantocks.  The birds were singing loudly, and a squirrel came and chattered at me, and then, running up a bough, sat up, still as if carved from the wood it was resting on, and watched me seemingly without fear.  Then I went down the combe and sought a pool, and bathed, and ate the last of the food the collier had given me.  Where I should get more I knew not, nor cared just then, for it was enough to carry me on for the next day and night, if need be, seeing that I had been bred to a hunter’s life in the open, and a Saxon should need but one full meal in the day, whether first or last.

Now while I ate and thought, it seemed harder to me to leave these hills and combes that I loved than it had seemed overnight; and at last I thought I would traverse them once again, and so make to the headland, above Watchet and Quantoxhead on either side, and then down along the shore, always deserted there, to the hills above Minehead, by skirting round Watchet, and so on into the great and lonely moors beyond, where I could go into house or hamlet without fear of being known.

Then I remembered that to seek help in the villages must be to ask charity.  That would be freely given, doubtless, but would lead to questions, and, moreover, my pride forbade me to ask in that way.  Then, again, for a man so subsisting it might be hard to win a way to a great man’s favour, though, indeed, a stout warrior was always sure to find welcome with him who had lands to protect, but not so certainly with the other housecarles among whom he would come.

So I began to see that my plight was worse than I thought, and sat there, with my back to an ash tree, while the birds sang round me, and was downcast for a while.

Then suddenly, as I traced the course that I had laid out in my mind, going over the hunts of the old days, when I rode beside my father and since, I bethought me of one day when the stag, a great one of twelve points, took to the sea just this side of Watchet town, swimming out bravely into Severn tide, so that we might hardly see him from the strand.  There went out three men in a little skiff to take him, having with them the young son of the owner of the boat.  And in some way the boat was overturned, as they came back towing the stag after them, when some hundred or more yards from shore, and in deep water where a swift current ran.  Two men clung to the upturned boat; but the other must swim, holding up his son, who, though a big boy of fourteen, was helpless in the water.  And I saw that it was like to go hard with both of them, for the current bore them away from shore and boat alike.