So I rode in, and my horse swam well, and we reached them in time, so that I took the boy by his long hair and raised him above the water, while the man, his father, swam beside us, and we got safely back to the beach, they exhausted enough but safe, and I pleased that my good horse did so well.

But the man would have it that I and not the horse saved his son, and was most grateful, bidding me command him in anything all his life long, even to life itself, saying that he owed me both his own and the boy’s.  And that made me fain to laugh it away, being uneasy at his praise, which seemed overmuch.  However, as we rode home, my father said I had made a friend for life, and that one never knew when such would be wanted.

Now this man was a franklin, and by no means a poor one, so now at last I remembered my father’s words, and knew that I was glad to have one friend whom I knew well enough would not turn away from me, for I had seen him many times since, and liked him well.

I would go to him, tell him all—­if he had not yet heard it, which was possible—­and so ask him to lend me a few silver pieces in my need.  I knew he would welcome the chance of showing the honesty of his words, and might well afford it.  Thus would I go, after dark lest I should be seen and he blamed, and so make onward with a lighter heart and freer hand.

So I waited a little longer in the safe recesses of the deep combe until a great gray cloud covered all the tops of the hills above me, and I thought it well to cross the open under its shelter to Holford Coombe, which I did.

There I loitered again, hearing the stags belling at times across the hollows to one another, but hardly wishful to meet with them in their anger.  I saw no man, for once I had crossed the highroad none was likely to seek the heights in Maytime.  And I think that no one would have known me.  For in my captivity my beard had grown, and my hair was longer than its wont; and when I had seen my face in the little pool that morning, I myself had started back from the older, bearded, and stern face that met me, instead of the fine, smooth, young looks that had been mine on the night of my last feast.  But there were many at the Moot, which was even now dispersing, who had seen only this new face of mine, and I could not trust to remaining long unrecognized.  None might harm me, that was true; but to be driven on, like a stray dog, from place to place, man to man, for fear of what should be done to him who aided me in word or deed, was worse, to my thought, than open enmity.

Now as night fell the clouds thickened up overhead, but it was still and clear below, if dark; and by the time the night fairly closed in, I stood on the heights above Watchet, and, looking down over the broad channel and to my left, saw the glimmering lights of the little town.

There I waited a little, pondering the safest way and time for reaching the franklin’s house, for I would not bring trouble on him by being seen.  All the while I looked out over the sea, and then I saw something else that I could not at first make out.