But this was not an uncommon feature in English travelling of that century, when there were no horses to be hired at the inns, and travellers could only purchase the animals they needed (if there were any to be sold); the forest, too, was reported to be the haunt of freebooters, and men dared to affirm that they were encouraged by the king to prey upon the fraternity at Glastonbury.

Still the dangers of the forest did not deter Alfred, who dearly loved woodland scenery and sport, from strolling therein when their hasty meal had been despatched, weary of the continuous objurgations and smalltalk of the crowded inn.

He had wandered some distance, lost in thought, when all at once he started in some surprise, for the spot on which he was seemed familiar to him, although he had never been in Wessex before.

Yes, he certainly knew the glade, with the fine beech trees surrounding it:  where could he have seen it before?  All at once he remembered his dream in the ruined temple, and started to discover the secret foreknowledge he had thus possessed.

He wandered up and down the glade till it became dusk, and then shook off the thoughts to which he had been a prey, and started to return to the inn, when, to his dismay, he found he had forgotten in which direction it lay.

While seeking to find the path by which he had entered the glade, he suddenly noticed a beaten track between two huge rocks, which seemed to point in the direction he had come, and yet which he recognised as the path he had been bidden to follow in his dream.  He hesitated not, but committed himself to it, while darkness seemed to increase each moment.

He was beginning to fear the dangers of a night in the woods, when he was startled by a sound as of many low voices, and at the same moment became conscious that a light was tinging with red the upper branches of the trees at no little distance, as if proceeding from some fire, hidden by the formation of the ground.

At first he thought that he was in the neighbourhood of outlaws, and tried to retire, but, as in his dream, he felt so strong an impulse to discover the party whom the woods concealed that he persevered.

Suddenly he stopped short, for he had come to the edge of a kind of natural amphitheatre, a deep hollow in the earth, the sides of which were covered with bushes and trees, while the area at the bottom might perhaps have covered a hundred square yards, and was clothed with verdant turf.  Not one, but several fires were burning, and around them were reclining small groups of armed men, while some were walking about chatting with each other.

Alfred gazed in much surprise, for the party did not at all realise his conception of a body of freebooters or robbers; they all seemed to wear the same uniform, and to resemble each other in their accoutrements and characteristics; they rather resembled, in short, a detachment of regular forces than a body of men whom chance might have thrown together, or the fortune of predatory war.