On Sundays and Saints’ days they all assemble in our minster church.  It was full this day at the high mass, and I preached them a homily upon the Saints, great part of which I took from a sermon I once heard the holy Dunstan preach.  And he showed us how saints did not live idle lives on this earth, but always went about, like their Lord and Master, doing good, and that through much tribulation they entered the eternal kingdom, which also bids fair to be our lot nowadays, although we be all miserable sinners, and not saints.

Ah! how I thought of the dear ones we have lost when the Gospel was read at mass, about the great multitude which no man could number, and I almost seemed as if I could see father, mother, and Elfric there.  I would not wish them back; yet my heart is very lonely sometimes.  I wonder whether they remember now that it is All Saints’ Day, and that we are thinking of them.  Yes, I am sure they must do so.

There have been few troubles from the Danes, close at hand; so few that they seem trivial in comparison with those our countrymen suffer elsewhere.  Still we have many of the pagans living as settlers in our neighbourhood, whose presence is tolerated for fear of the reprisals which might follow any acts of hostility against them.  Kill one Dane, the people say, and a hundred come to his funeral.  Many of these settlers have acquired their lands peaceably, but others by the strong arms of their ancestors in periods of ancient strife; and these have been allowed to keep their possessions for generations, so that if they did not retain their heathen customs we might forget they were not Englishmen.

One of these lives near us.  His name is Anlaf.  Some say he boasts of being a descendant of that Anlaf who once ravaged England, and was defeated at Brunanburgh.  He married an English girl, whose heart, they say, he broke by his cruelty.  They had one child, Alfgar by name.

The mother died a Christian.  Taking my life in my hands, I penetrated their fortalice, and administered the last sacrament to her; but they threatened my life for entering their domains, and, perhaps, had I been but a simple priest, and not also, small boast as it is, the son of a powerful English thane, whom they feared to offend, I had died in doing my duty.  When the poor girl was dying she committed the boy as well as she could to my care, begging me to see that he was baptized; but the father has prevented me from carrying out her wishes, asserting that he would sooner slay the lad.

But it seems as if the boy retained some traces of his mother’s faith; over and over again I have seen him hiding in some remote corner of the church during service time, but he has always shrunk away when any of the brethren attempted to speak to him.

I am sure he wishes to be a Christian.

I may, perhaps, find a chance of speaking to him, and a few words may reach his heart.  He knows my brother’s family, and has once or twice joined them in expeditions in the woods, and even entered their gates.  His must be a lonely life at home; there are no other children, but from time to time hoary warriors, upon whose souls lies, I fear, the guilt of much innocent blood, find a home there.