“With Erpwald who is dead, men would hold that you had a blood feud.  That is done with; but his son yet lives.  I do not think it is your way, or Owen’s, to hold that a feud must be carried on in the old heathen way of our forefathers.”

“Most truly not,” I said.  “What ill has a son of Erpwald done to me or mine?”

“None!  Nay, rather has he done well, for I know that he has honoured the grave of your father, and even now is ready to do what he can to make amends for the old wrong.  He brought me this.”

He took up the parchment that he had shewn me before.  It was a grant of the manors of Eastdean to Erpwald, gained by those means of utmost craft whereby the king thought that indeed the last of our line had perished by other hands than those of the heathen thane.

“Honest and straightforward and Christian-like is this young Erpwald,” the king said.  “Well brought up by his Christian mother, if not very ready or brilliant in his ways.  Now he has learned how his father came into the lands, and though he might well have held them after his uncle on this grant, he has come hither to set the matter in my hands.  ‘It is not fair,’ quoth he, ’that I should hold them if one is left of the line of Ella.  I should not sleep easily in my bed.  Nevertheless, I will buy them if so be that one is left to sell them to me.’  So he sighed, for the place is his home.”

“All these years it has been no trouble to me that Erpwald’s brother has held the place, my King.  It will be no trouble to think that a better Erpwald holds them yet.”

“I do not think that he will be happy unless he deems that he has paid some price—­some weregild {ii}, as one may say; for slow minds as his hang closely to their thoughts when they are formed.  See, Oswald, I have thought of all this, and the young man has been here for a fortnight.  I brought him here from Winchester, where he joined me.  Let me tell you what I think.”

“The matter is in your hands altogether, my King.”

“As you have set it there,” he said, smiling gently.  “Now all seems plain to me, and I will say that this is even what I thought you would wish to do.  How shall it be if we bid Erpwald, for the deed of his father, to build a church in Eastdean and there to keep a priest, that all men shall know how that the martyr is honoured, and the land be the better for his death?”

Nought better than this could be, as I thought, and I told the king so.

“Why, then,” he said, “that is well.  I shall have pleased both parties, as I hope.  I know you will meet him in all friendliness.”

Then he let me go, and it was with a light heart that I parted from him.  Now I knew that my father’s grave and memory would be held in more than common honour, and I was content.