Sullenly they dropped their weapons, and the sheriff, coming forward, seconded me, although in a very contemptuous manner.

“Let him have the lad for his share of the night’s work,” he said.

And so God gave me the poor lad’s life.

I had scarcely time to lay him on a sloping bank, where the light which shone so luridly from his burning home might fall upon him, when my brother Elfwyn appeared on the scene with a score of his men.

He recognised us by our habits, and came and looked with me at the orphan as he lay on the bank.  The boy had received no serious wound, but was exhausted, as much I thought by the violence of his emotions as by his injuries.  He was wet through; his clothes were torn with brambles, for he had followed a straight path through six miles of tangled forest, from Aescendune.

They had unfortunately given him a bed in a chamber which looked towards his home:  he had chanced to wake, had looked from the window, seen the flames, and had started thither at once, swimming the moat when he could not cross the drawbridge—­suspecting, doubtless, that he was surrounded by treachery.

I had already poured a rich cordial down his throat, and he was coming to himself, my brother aiding me, when the sheriff, grand in his robe and chain of office, came up.

“Good day, or rather night, to you, Thane of Aescendune,” said he to Elfwyn; “we have had a fair night’s work, and destroyed a big wasp’s nest; have you come for your share in the spoil?”

“I only ask permission to preserve life; your work has been of an opposite nature.”

“Yes, we have been obedient to our king, and avenged him this night of his enemies, who are also, I should have thought, the enemies of the Church.”

“God will not bless midnight murder,” said I.

“Murder! it is not murder to slay heathen Danes; had they been Christians it would, of course, have been a different thing.”

“He hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth,” I replied.

“The good prior wishes me to talk theology.  Unfortunately I have much work to do; you will hear tidings soon of other Danish holds than this.  The land may rejoice, freed from her oppressors, and they who blame our work will praise its results.”

“That remains to be seen,” we both replied.

We had, meanwhile, placed Alfgar, now partially recovered, on a palfrey; and, supported by my brother and me, one on each side, we led him homewards.  Arrived at the castle, we gave him to the care of Osred, the domestic physician.  He looked at the patient, and pronounced a favourable opinion, saying that with time and care all would be well.  But his left arm was broken, and he had received a slight blow on the head.  Fever was the leech’s chief apprehension; if he could keep that off, he said he doubted not all would be well.

St. Andrew’s Day.—­

Our patient has lain some time in a state of delirium, whereat no one could wonder.  In his ravings he was incessantly acting over the scenes through which he had passed during the dreadful night which followed St. Brice’s Day.  But, thanks to a good constitution, today he has taken a favourable turn, and seems likely to recover from a blow which would have hopelessly shattered a frailer frame.