And so I preached after this manner, and as I did so I saw the stranger was deeply moved, and marvelled who he could be, that he entered so deeply into so personal a sermon, which treated of a peculiar joy which a stranger intermeddleth not with.

Now after the mass was ended, we came forth from the church, and Alfgar, with Ethelgiva, walked down the path to the Lychgate, when Alfgar’s eyes fell upon the stranger, whereupon, to our astonishment, he started, then stepped forward, fell on his knees, and cried, with a choked voice, “Father, your blessing!”

At first we thought it was reverence, somewhat exaggerated, to a pilgrim, but when the aged man cried aloud, “The God of Abraham bless thee, even thee, O my son!” and the tears streamed down the furrows of his aged cheeks, we knew it must be something more than this, and so it proved.

It was none other than Anlaf—­Anlaf who had disappeared from all the knowledge of friend or foe for ten years!

We all received him, especially my brother Elfwyn, with great joy—­for we shared Alfgar’s happiness—­and we led him into the house, where we tendered him all the offices of hospitality.

It was by degrees that we learned his story.  He was really converted to Christianity by the example of his son, whose words produced a far deeper effect upon him than either he or Alfgar suspected at the time.

And when he saw that son prefer a cruel death to apostasy, his heart was moved—­deeply moved, so that he pondered over all he had heard from him and from a once loved wife, whose words had seemed lost, but whose prayers perhaps watered them into growth after she was dead and gone.  So he left the army without telling any one whither he went, and sought instruction from a Christian.

And he found a Christian priest hidden in the woods, where he administered the word and sacraments to a starving few, but secretly, for fear of the Danes; and from him he learned the truth and was baptized.

Then, feeling himself unhappy in this distracted land—­separated from the English by blood, from the Danes by religion—­he determined to go on pilgrimage.

Once in the Holy Land, he had to undergo much contumely from the pagan Saracens, who, to the disgrace of Christendom, defile the Holy City by their presence, and maltreat the blessed pilgrims; but he had learned to glory in humiliation.  At last he retired to the woods on the sources of the Jordan, weary of earth, and there he joined an aged hermit, with whom he lived for two years, and when the hermit died he took his place, and dwelt as an ascetic, ministering, however, to the necessities of pilgrims who journeyed that way to the Holy Land.

From some of these pilgrims he learned, at length, that English and Danes were united in peace, and a great desire of revisiting England and searching out his son seized upon him.  On the road he heard that Edmund was dead and Canute reigned alone, and so he came hither at once, and has arrived, God so willing it, in time to see his son married to the heiress of Aescendune.