"Not in my time."
Our readers may almost have forgotten the existence of the poor thrall Judith during the exciting scene we have narrated.
She loved her masters, young and old, deeply loved them did this hereditary slave, and her anxiety had been extreme during the period of their danger: she skipped in and out of the hut, for no one thought her worth molesting, she peered through the bushes, she acted like a hen partridge whose young are in danger, and when they bound Osric, actually flew at the men-at-arms, but they thrust her so roughly aside that she fell; little recked they. An English thrall, were she wife, mother, or daughter, was naught in their estimation.
Yet she did not feel the same anxiety in one respect, which Sexwulf felt. "I can save him yet," she muttered; "they shall never put a rope around his bonnie neck, not even if I have to betray the secret I have kept since his infancy."
So she listened close at hand. Once or twice she seemed on the point of thrusting herself forward, when the fate of her dear boy seemed to hang in the balance, but restrained herself.
"I promised," she said, "I promised, and he will grieve to learn that I was faithless to my word. The old woman has a soul, aged crone though she be: and I swore by the black cross of Abingdon. Yet black cross or white one, I would risk the claws of Satan, sooner than allow the rope to touch his neck: bad enough that it should encircle his fair wrists."
When at last the suspense was over, and the grandsire and grandson were ordered to be taken as prisoners to the castle, she seemed content.
"I must see him," she said, "and tell him what has chanced: he will know what to do."
Just then she heard a voice which startled her.
"Shall we burn the hut, my lord?"