I looked at the pale hair and beard of the man, and wondered.  Evan’s had been black as night.

“It is Evan’s voice,” I said; “but you have changed strangely.”

“Needs must I, Thane, with every man’s hand against me, if I would serve you and Owen the prince for your sake.”

Then I looked round for my shepherd, but he had fled.

“Come to the house with me,” I said.  “I think that none will know you, and if they do so I will answer for you.”

“No, Thane; after tomorrow, seeing that even Howel sets such store on finding the valley, as men tell me, I shall be safe even from him.  I think that you are the only one who will trust me yet.”

There I knew that he was most likely right.  Had I not been certain that he could have kept me from knowing him even yet, I think that I might have been doubtful of him myself.

“As you will,” I answered.  “We can meet tomorrow.  Now give me that token by which I am to know that you have not harmed Owen.”

“It is right that you should not yet trust me,” Evan said, as if he read my thoughts, “for I do not deserve it.  Here is one token:  ’It is not good to sleep in the moonlight.’  And I will give you yet another, if I may, for, indeed, I would have you know that the words I spoke yonder were true when I said that you should be glad that you freed me, and that I have tried to serve you.  That may be known by the token of the blackthorn spine and the dog whip.”

I reined up my horse in wonderment and stared at him, and he came close to my side, so that I could see him plainly.  And, lo! his shoulders grew rounded, and his eyes crossed terribly, and they bided so, and he mumbled the words he had said when the whip of the huntsman fell on him.

Then he straightened himself again and looked timidly at me.  He was not like the man who had bound me so cruelly in Holford combe on the Quantocks.

“Evan,” I cried, “what you did for me at the ealdorman’s gate is enough to win any pardon you may need.”

“It is wonderful that, after all, pardon should come from you, Thane.  Do you mind how I said to you that I hoped to win it otherwise through you when we took you on the Quantocks?  It is good to feel as a free man once more.”

“Free, and maybe honoured yet, Evan,” I said; for I knew that he had risked his life for me and Owen.  “Presently you shall come with me to Wessex, where none know you, and there shall be a fresh life for you.  It is in my mind that what you brought on me was as a last hope.”

“Ay, that is true, Thane.”

And then I asked him to tell me all he knew of Owen, and of what had happened here, and how it came about that he knew aught.  And as he told me it was plain that this was a true tale, for one could feel it so.

He had followed Owen, keeping himself hidden, after I went to Winchester, for there he knew that I was safe, and yet he would serve me if he could.  So from the hillside where he lay he had seen the burning and the fight; and after Owen fell he followed them who bore him away, till he lost them in a grey mist that rolled from the hills and hid them in the darkness.  Nor had he been able to find trace of them again, though he had hunted far and wide.