While seeking to find the path by which he had entered the glade, he suddenly noticed a beaten track between two huge rocks, which seemed to point in the direction he had come, and yet which he recognised as the path he had been bidden to follow in his dream. He hesitated not, but committed himself to it, while darkness seemed to increase each moment.
He was beginning to fear the dangers of a night in the woods, when he was startled by a sound as of many low voices, and at the same moment became conscious that a light was tinging with red the upper branches of the trees at no little distance, as if proceeding from some fire, hidden by the formation of the ground.
At first he thought that he was in the neighbourhood of outlaws, and tried to retire, but, as in his dream, he felt so strong an impulse to discover the party whom the woods concealed that he persevered.
Suddenly he stopped short, for he had come to the edge of a kind of natural amphitheatre, a deep hollow in the earth, the sides of which were covered with bushes and trees, while the area at the bottom might perhaps have covered a hundred square yards, and was clothed with verdant turf. Not one, but several fires were burning, and around them were reclining small groups of armed men, while some were walking about chatting with each other.
Alfred gazed in much surprise, for the party did not at all realise his conception of a body of freebooters or robbers; they all seemed to wear the same uniform, and to resemble each other in their accoutrements and characteristics; they rather resembled, in short, a detachment of regular forces than a body of men whom chance might have thrown together, or the fortune of predatory war.
While he gazed upon them, two of their number, whose attire was rich and costly, and who seemed to be of higher rank than the rest, perhaps their officers, attracted his attention as they walked near the spot where, clinging to a tree, he overlooked the encampment from above.
One of them was a tall, dark warrior, whose whole demeanour was that of the professional soldier, whose dress was plain yet rich, and who might easily be guessed to be the commander of the party. He was talking earnestly, but in a subdued tone, to his younger companion, whom he seemed to be labouring to convince of the propriety of some course of action.
Alfred watched them eagerly; the form of the younger—for so he appeared by his slender frame—seemed familiar to him, and when at last they turned their faces and walked towards him, the light of a neighbouring fire showed him the face of his brother Elfric.
“My dream!” he mentally exclaimed.
They were evidently talking about some very important subject, and it was also evident that the objections of the younger, whatever they might be, were becoming rapidly overruled, when, as chance, if it were chance, would have it, they paused in their circuit of the little camp just beneath the tree where Alfred was posted.