[Illustration:  ALFRED WATCHING THE CAKES.]

Alfred was, for a time, extremely depressed and disheartened by the sense of his misfortunes and calamities; but the monkish writers who described his character and his life say that the influence of his sufferings was extremely salutary in softening his disposition and improving his character.  He had been proud, and haughty, and domineering before.  He became humble, docile, and considerate now.  Faults of character that are superficial, resulting from the force of circumstances and peculiarities of temptation, rather than from innate depravity of heart, are easily and readily burned off in the fire of affliction, while the same severe ordeal seems only to indurate the more hopelessly those propensities which lie deeply seated in an inherent and radical perversity.

Alfred, though restless and wretched in his apparently hopeless seclusion, bore his privations with a great degree of patience and fortitude, planning, all the time, the best means of reorganizing his scattered forces, and of rescuing his country from the ruin into which it had fallen.  Some of his former friends, roaming as he himself had done, as fugitives about the country, happened at length to come into the neighborhood of his retreat.  He heard of them, and cautiously made himself known.  They were rejoiced to find their old commander once more, and, as there was no force of the Danes in that neighborhood at the time, they lingered, timidly and fearlessly at first, in the vicinity, until, at length, growing more bold as they found themselves unmolested in their retreat, they began to make it their gathering place and head-quarters.  Alfred threw off his disguise, and assumed his true character.  Tidings of his having been thus discovered spread confidentially among the most tried and faithful of his Saxon followers, who had themselves been seeking safety in other places of refuge.  They began, at first cautiously and by stealth, but afterward more openly, to repair to the spot.  Alfred’s family, too, from which he had now been for many months entirely separated, contrived to rejoin him.  The herdsman, who proved to be a man of intelligence and character superior to his station, entered heartily into all these movements.  He kept the secret faithfully.  He did all in his power to provide for the wants and to promote the comfort of his warlike guests, and, by his fidelity and devotion, laid Alfred under obligations of gratitude to him, which the king, when he was afterward restored to the throne, did not forget to repay.

Notwithstanding, however, all the efforts which the herdsman made to obtain supplies, the company now assembled at Ethelney were sometimes reduced to great straits.  There were not only the wants of Alfred and his immediate family and attendants to be provided for, but many persons were continually coming and going, arriving often at unexpected times, and acting, as roving and disorganized bodies of soldiers are