All this time Alfred seems to have kept his headquarters at Athelney.  Thence they went to Wedmore.  There the Wise Men came together, and Alfred and Guthorm (or, to give him the name by which he was baptised, Aethelstan) made a treaty.  This treaty was very much better kept than any treaty with the Danes had ever been kept before.  The Danes got much the larger part of England; still Alfred contrived to keep London.  Some accounts say that only those of the Danes stayed in England who chose to become Christians, and that the rest went away into Gaul under a famous leader of theirs named Hasting.  Anyhow, in 880 they went quite away into what was now their own land of East-Anglia, and divided it among themselves.  Thus Alfred had quite freed his own Kingdom from the Danes, though he was obliged to leave so much of the island in their hands.  And even through all these misfortunes, the Kingdom of Wessex did in some sort become greater.  Remember that in 880, when Alfred had done so many great things, he was still only thirty-one years old.

We can see how much people always remembered and thought of Alfred, by there being many more stories told of him than of almost any other of the old Kings.  One story is that Alfred, wishing to know what the Danes were about and how strong they were, set out one day from Athelney in the disguise of a minstrel or juggler, and went into the Danish camp, and stayed there several days, amusing the Danes with his playing, till he had seen all that he wanted, and then went back without any one finding him out.  This is what you may call a soldier’s story, while some of the others are rather what monks and clergymen would like to tell.  Thus there is a tale which is told in a great many different ways, but of which the following is the oldest shape.

“Now King Alfred was driven from his Kingdom by the Danes, and he lay hid for three years in the isle of Glastonbury.  And it came to pass on a day that all his folk were gone out to fish, save only Alfred himself and his wife and one servant whom he loved.  And there came a pilgrim to the King, and begged for food.  And the King said to his servant, ‘What food have we in the house?’ And his servant answered, ’My Lord, we have in the house but one loaf and a little wine.’  Then the King gave thanks to God, and said, ’Give half of the loaf and half of the wine to this poor pilgrim.’  So the servant did as his lord commanded him, and gave to the pilgrim half of the loaf and half of the wine, and the pilgrim gave great thanks to the King.  And when the servant returned, he found the loaf whole, and the wine as much as there had been aforetime.  And he greatly wondered, and he wondered also how the pilgrim had come into the isle, for that no man could come there save by water, and the pilgrim had no boat.  And the King greatly wondered also.  And at the ninth hour came back the folk who had gone to fish.  And they had three boats full of fish, and they said, ’Lo, we have