A Prince of Cornwall | Page 8

you have brought back to me."
"It was a chance meeting, Thane, and I am glad to have been of use. No need to speak of reward, for it is indeed enough to have seen the boy home safely."
"Why, then," said my father, "I cannot have a stranger pass my hall at this time in the evening, when it is too late to reach the town in safety. Here you must at least lodge for the night, or Eastdean will be shamed. Your voice tells me that you are a stranger--but maybe you have your men waiting for you at hand? There will be room for them also."
For there was that in the tones of the voice of this man which told my father that here he had no common wanderer.
"I am alone," my friend said. "But your men seek the little one even yet in the forest. Will you not call them in?"
My father looked at the man for a moment, and smiled.
"Ay, I forgot in my joy. They are well-nigh as anxious as I have been."
Then he took down the great horn that hung by the door, and wound the homing call that brings all within its hearing back to the hall, and its hoarse echoes went across the silent woods until it was answered by the other horns that passed on the message until the last sounds came but faintly to us. I heard men cheering also, for they knew by the token that all was well. My father had me in his arms all this time, standing in the door.
"There would have been sorrow enough had he been lost indeed," my father said. "He is the last of the old line, and the fathers of those men whom you hear have followed his fathers since the days of Ella. Come in, and they will thank you also. Where did you find him?"
Then as he turned and went into the hall the light flashed red on my jerkin suddenly, and he cried, "Here is blood on his clothing!--Is he hurt?"
"No," I said stoutly; "maybe it is the blood of the stoat I slew, or else it has come off the shepherd's sleeves. He hewed off the wolf's head and hung it on the tree."
Then my father understood what my peril had been--even that which he and all the village had feared for me, and his face paled, and he held out his hand to the man, drawing in his breath sharply.
"Woden!" he cried, "what is this, friend? Are you hurt, yourself? For the wolf must be slain ere his head can be hefted, as we say."
"No hurt to any but the wolf," the man said, smiling a little. "We did but meet with one who called the pack on us. So I even hung his head on a tree, that the pack when it came might stay to leap at it. They were all we had to fear, and maybe that saved us."
"I marvel that you are not even now in the tree, yourself--with the boy."
"Nay, but the frost is cruel, and he would have been sorely feared with the leaping and howls of the beasts. There were always trees at hand as we fled, if needs were to take to them. It was in my mind that it were best to try to get him home, or near it."
Then said my father, gripping the hand that met his: "There is more that I would say, but I cannot set thoughts into words well. Only, I know that I have a man before me. Tell me your name, that neither I nor the boy may ever forget it."
"Here, in the Saxon lands, men call me Owen the Briton," he answered simply.
"I thought your voice had somewhat of the Welsh tone," my father said. "And your English is of Mercia. I have heard that there are Britons in the fenland there."
"I am of West Wales, Thane, but I have bided long in Mercia."
Then came my old nurse, and there were words enough for the time. Her eyes were red with weeping, but it was all that my father could do to prevent her scolding me soundly then and there for the fright I had given her. But she set a great bowl of bread and milk before me, and the men began to come in at that time, and they stood in a ring round me and watched me eat it as if they had never seen me before, while my father spoke aside of the flight to Owen on the high place. But concerning his own story my father asked the stranger no more until he chose to open the matter himself.
After supper there was all the tale to be told, and when that was done the Welshman