“We must bide and wait,” I said.  “He will come when the men are in hall.”

“I don’t like it,” Erling answered, speaking quietly.  “You were to meet him at the same time as before; yet he cannot have come.  None would wonder at a priest staying out after the supper call, but maybe men might wonder at his leaving after it had sounded.”

For a quarter of an hour we walked to and fro in the wood, down one path and up another.  Then we thought that we might be following the priest round the wood as he looked for us, and we dared not call.  The watch on the ramparts was set already.  Now the loneliness of the wood had made us bold, and we thought we had best go one each way, and so make sure that we should find Selred if he were here.

At that time we were at the far corner of the wood, which was square, with a path all round it and one each way across.  It was a favourite walk of Offa’s during summer, men told me.

Erling turned to the left and I to the right, and we walked fast away from each other.  It was getting very dim in these overarched paths under the great trees, but not so dim that one could not see fairly well if any figure came down the way.  There was no wind to speak of, and it was all very silent.  One could hear the noises from the palace plainly at times, and in one place the red light from the hall shone from a high window through the trees.  Just at this time the clouds fled from off the face of the moon, and it was light, with that strange brightness that comes of dying day and brightening night mingled.

I came to the corner where my path turned, and before me there was a figure, as it were of some one who had just turned into the wood from toward the ramparts.  The way by which Selred and I came here last night was there.  And it was surely the cassocked priest himself, though I could not see his face.  I hurried toward him with a little word of low greeting which he could hardly have heard.  My foot caught a dry twig in the path, and it cracked loudly, and with that the figure stopped suddenly and half turned away.

Then I said, “Stay, father; it is but I.”

And with that came a little cry from the figure, and it turned and came swiftly to me.

It was Hilda herself, and how she came here alone thus I could not guess.  She had on a long black cloak which was like enough to the garb of the chaplain to deceive me at first in the dim light, so that I made no movement to meet her.  I think that frightened her for the moment, for she stayed, as if she doubted whether I were indeed he whose voice she thought she knew, until I spoke her name and went toward her.

And then in a moment she had sought the safety of my arms, and was weeping as if she would never stop; while I tried to stay her fears, and bid her tell me what had befallen her.  And it was many a minute before I could do that.

As we stood so Erling came hastily, having heard the hushed voices.  More than that he had heard also, for his sword was drawn.  He half halted as he saw who was here, and pointed over his shoulder toward the palace gate, and then held up his hand to bid me hearken.