“I will get me to North Wales or Mercia, Thane, and there will I live honestly, and that I will swear.  Only, I will pray you not to tell Howel that I am free.”

“I am like to tell no man,” I answered grimly.  “For I should but be called a soft-hearted fool for my pains.”

“Yet shall you be glad that you freed me.  Bid Owen the prince look to the door before ever he opens it.  Bid him wear his mail day and night, and never ride unguarded.  Let him have one whom he trusts to sleep across his doorway, until Tregoz and his men are all accounted for.”

“Well, then,” I said, “farewell—­as well as you shall deserve hereafter.  You best know if you have one safe place left to you in England or in Wales.”

“I was not all so bad until the law hounded me forth from men,” he said.  “I have yet places where I am held as an honest man.”

Now I had enough of him, and I would not ask him more of himself yet I will say that my heart softened somewhat toward him, for I knew that here also he had been well thought of.  Almost did I forget how he had treated me, for now that seemed a grudge against Tregoz.  Maybe that was all foolishness on my part, but I am not ashamed thereof today, as I was then.

“Stay, have you any weapon?” I said, as I was turning away.  “There are many ills that may befall an unarmed man in a wild country.”

“There was a seax here,” he said, rising stiffly.  “They left it on the ground, that I might see help out of my reach, as it were.  Ay, here it is.”

He took it up, and I knew that after all he had felt somewhat as he had made me feel when I saw help close to me and might not have it.  I pitied him, for I knew well what his torture had been.  Ay, and I will tell this, that men may know how this terror burnt into me.  Many a time have I let a trapped rat go, because I would not see the agony of dumb helplessness in anything.  It frays me.  There is no wonder that I set Evan free.

I said no more, but left him staring after me with the seax in his hand, and rode on my way, thinking most of all of the peril that was about Owen, and longing to be back with him that I might guard him.  It seemed likely now that Gerent could take all these men whose names I had heard without the least trouble, for they could not deem that their plans were known.  Ina would surely let me bide with my foster father till danger to him was past.

So I came into the road that runs along the top of the Ridgeway, and then I knew where I was.  I could see the great ness of Tenby far before me across the hills, and presently at a turn in the road I saw Howel and Eric and his men ahead of me.  They had taken the stag, and knew that I should make my way back, and so troubled not at all for me.

There Howel and I parted from the Danes, they going back to Tenby, while we returned slowly to Pembroke.  And when we came to the palace yard we found a little train of horses and men there, as though some new guests had come in lately.