I laughed a little, though I was pleased, and answered: 

“You cannot do that, father—­for he has christened everyone in the parish that is thirty years younger than he.

“Aye, I forgot that,” the priest said gravely.  “They will miss him sorely.  Therefore I will say that he will return ere long, but that my ways must be borne with until he comes.”

“Now I think that if you steer between those two sayings of yours you will do well,” I answered.

“Ailwin’s ways wrought in my manner, therefore.  I thank you, thane,” the priest said.  “I am cloister bred, and know nought much of secular work.  Now, that is enough about myself.  This morning, very early, came Ailwin and asked for one to take his place, and I am a Dane of the old settlement, and so I came, as running less risk if Cnut returns, as they say he will.  Then Ailwin bade me seek you and say this.  That because of the wandering Danes he would take his charges into some more quiet place for a time at least.  Truly, he bade me tell you, they have a last refuge where none would find them, but it is ill fitted for a long stay, and it is likely that once there it might now be months before they could leave it.  So he and Gunnhild think best to go far off.  They will return with peace, and then he bids me tell you that, if the Lord will, all shall be well.”

“Where will he go?” I asked.

“I know not.  He gave me the message, and I know no more.  Not even of whom he speaks.”

Now for a moment I grew angry with Ailwin again, for it seemed to me that I should have been told more than this.  Then I thought that perhaps Ailwin himself knew not yet where he would go.

“Does Ailwin know that there is news from Denmark?” I asked.

“Our abbot told him, but he knew already, having had word from Colchester in some way.  He had heard before we as it seems.”

That was doubtless Gunnhild’s work, for I came to know afterwards that in the long years of trouble she had made a chain of friends who would pass word to her from every point whence trouble would come.  It seems to me that much of the dame’s knowledge of coming events was gained in ways like this rather than by witchcraft.

Then I was glad that the danger that I had learned had been foreseen by her and Ailwin; and as I sat without speaking for a few minutes I felt that now I was free to follow Olaf where he would lead his men to meet the Danes, for Hertha was not here, and her I could follow no longer.

There was no more to be learned from the priest, and so we rose up and went down to the churchyard, and saw the work, and I told him what I could of Ailwin and his ways, and thought that he had found one who was like him in thought and gentleness.

So presently I took Eadmund’s penny from my pouch and gave it to him, telling him about it, even as I would have told Ailwin.

“Give me this back when I return, father,” I said, “and it shall remind me of some vow which I will make at your advice.”