“Do not tell her anything, Ealdorman,” Erpwald said.  “No need to say what a near thing it was, or that I handled her like a sack of oats.  She would never forgive me.  But Oswald says it was all that I could have done.  It was a good thing that he was there to take her.”

“How are you going to account for the broken head, then?”

“Say I was thrown from my horse afterward, or somewhat of that kind,” he said.  “Or, stay, these will do it.  I have been birds’ nesting.  I thought these would please her.  One gets falls while scrambling after the like.”

He put his hand into his pouch as he spoke.

“Plague on it, one is broken,” he said, bringing out a raven’s egg.  “There were two in that place where I stopped falling.”

The ealdorman and I stared at him in wonder.  It amazed us that in such a moment a man should think of this trifle.  And now he was turning his soiled pouch inside out and wiping it with a tuft of grass, grumbling the while.  It was plain that the danger had made no impression on him.

“Were not you frightened when you found how nearly you had fallen from the cliff?” I asked him.

“No; why should I be?  I did not fall from it.  I was feared enough when I thought that I was going, and I thought I was at the bottom when I came to myself.  But as I had not gone so far, there was an end.”

I minded the story of the Huntsman’s Leap, and how I had felt when I knew my escape.  It was plain that this forest-bred Erpwald, with his cool head, and lack of power to picture what might have been, would make a good warrior, so far as dogged fearlessness goes, and that is a long way.

Now the ealdorman kept what else he might have to say until we were at home, for it was time for us to be off.  So we brushed Erpwald down and hid his cut under a cap that the good franklin of the house lent him, for his own was gone, as he said, to make a bird’s nest somewhere on the cliffs; and then Elfrida came from the cottage, looking a little white and shaken with her fright, but otherwise none the worse, and we started.

Erpwald kept out of her sight for a little while, but as we were fairly on the way home it was not long before he found his way to her side, and we let those two have their say out together.

One by one the friends who had joined us dropped out of the party as their way led them aside, until by the time we reached the ealdorman’s house only half a dozen of us were left.  Then Herewald would have us come in for some cheer after the long day, but we were tired and stained, and I must be back at the guardroom, and so he bade his folk bring somewhat out here to us.  There was a cask of ale already set on the low wall by the gate for the men, and we sat on our horses waiting, with a little crowd of thralls and children round us, looking at the two good deer that we brought back.  Then the steward and some of the women of the house brought horns of ale from the house for us.