“Little know you of spells if you know not that,” she said, having lost all fear of us, as it seemed.

“I am only a northerner,” Harek said.  “Maybe ’tis a spell against a sprained ankle, which seems likely.  I only know one for that.”

“Which know you?” she said scornfully; “you are over young to meddle with such like.”

“This,” said Harek.  “It works well if the sprain be bathed with spring-cold water, while one says it twice daily: 

“’Baldur and Woden
Went to the woodland;
There Baldur’s foal fell,
Wrenching its foot.’

“That is how it begins.”

Then the old woman’s eyes sparkled.

“Ay; that is good.  Learn it me, I pray you.  Now I know that you have wizardry, for you name the old gods.”

“Tell me first what hammer and nail work in footprint.”

“Why, yon old hag has overlooked me,” she said savagely.  “Now, if one does as I have done, one nails her witchcraft to herself {xiii}.”

“Whose footprint does the nail go into?” Harek asked.

“Why, hers surely.  Now this is the spell,” and she chanted somewhat in broad Wessex, and save that Baldur’s name and Thor’s hammer also came into it, I do not know what it all was.  I waxed impatient now, for I thought that Heregar might be waiting for us.

But she and Harek exchanged spells, and then I said: 

“Now, dame, know you of any thane in hiding hereabouts?”

Thereat she looked sharply at me.

“I know nothing.  Here be I, lamed, in the cottage all day.”

“There is a close friend of mine in hiding from the Danes somewhere here,” I said, doubting, from her manner, if she spoke the truth.  “I would take him to a safer place.”

“None safer,” she answered.  “What is his name?”

Then I doubted for a moment; but Harek’s quick wit helped me.

“Godred,” he said; for the name by which the king had called himself once it was likely that he would use again.

“I know of no thanes,” she said, though not at once, so that I was sure she knew somewhat more than she thought safe to tell.

Then she was going, but Harek stayed her.

“Yours is a good spell against the evil eye, mother,” he said, “but I can tell you a better.”

“What is it?” she said eagerly.

“News for news,” he answered carelessly.  “Tell us if you know aught of this thane, and I will tell you.”

“I said not that there was a thane.” she said at once.

“Nay, mother; but you denied it not.  Come now; I think what I can tell you will save you trouble.”

She thought for a little, weighing somewhat in her mind, as it seemed, and then she chose to add to her store of witchcraft.

“Yonder, then,” she said, nodding to the dense alder thickets that hid the river Tone from us, across a stretch of frozen mere or flooded land.  “I wot well that he who bides in Denewulf’s cottage is a thane, for he wears a gold ring, and wipes his hands in the middle of the towel, and sits all day studying and troubling in his mind in such wise that he is no good to any one—­not even turning a loaf that burns on the hearth before his eyes.  Ay, they call him Godred.”