Oh, how anxiously he strained the senses of sight and hearing for news from the forest party! could he but have given one warning, he would willingly have died like Bertric; all was silence --dread silence--the sleeping woods around gave no token of their dread inmates.
An hour and a half must have passed, when a bright light, increasing each minute in intensity, appeared through the trees-- then a loud and startling cry arose--after which all was silence.
The light seemed to increase in extent and to have two chief centres of its brilliancy, and Alfgar guessed them to be the hall and the priory.
But no screams of distress or agony pierced the air from two hundred women and children, and Alfgar hoped, oh, so earnestly! that they might have escaped, warned in time by the theows.
With this hope he was forced to rest content, as hour after hour rolled by, and at length the footsteps of a returning party were heard.
It proved to be only a detachment of the fifty, sent to bring horses to be loaded with the spoil. Alfgar listened intently to gain information, and heard enough to show that the Danes had been disappointed in some way, probably in their thirst for blood.
"But how could they have known we were coming? We have marched through a hundred miles of the most desolate country we could find, and have come faster than any one could have carried the information."
Such seemed to be the substance of the complaint of the warriors on guard, from which Alfgar felt justified in believing in the escape of the theows, and the consequent deliverance of the people, if not of the place.
Half the horses were taken to fetch the plunder, the other half left where they were, for the spot was conveniently situated, and the distance from Aescendune only about two miles.
When they had gone, Alfgar heard his guards talking together.