"Nay, but listen. I have sorely troublesome tenants, the Danes, in our land of Gower, and you can take them in hand for me. You are the man I need as what you would call the ealdorman there. You may take such a place in all honour."
"Jefan," I said, "you are indeed a friend, and I will not say no to you. All seems to go well when you have a hand in it."
"Sometimes," said he, laughing. "I only wish that everything was as easily arranged as this. Well, go. I want you back to stay, and yet I don't, as one may say. At all events, we will have the wedding here."
Now it need not be said that on the next day I did go, landing in the early morning under the ancient walled camp of Worle, which the Eastern traders made when they used to come for our Mendip metals; and there I hired a horse and rode homeward, sorely longing for my good skew-bald steed, which stood in a Roman stable at Caerleon.
Now I cannot tell all the thoughts which came into my mind as I climbed the last hill and looked down into the wooded hollow where lay our home. The long years seemed to roll back, and it was but as yesterday that I had been there. And then I met a man I knew, one of our own thralls; and he seemed to have aged all in a moment, for I had thought, before he drew near, to see his face as it had been on the day when I went to Winchester to see the bride of our king brought home. He did not know me, but he doffed his cap.
"Wulf," said I, "how fares the thane?"
"Well, lord," he answered, staring at me. "He is in the hall an you want him."
And then of a sudden a great smile began to grow across his face, and he roared in his honest Wessex voice:
"By staff and thorn, if it is not our young master home from the wars! Good lack, but how you have grown and widened!"
He clutched at my hand and shook it, and then kissed it, after a friend's fashion first, and then as a thrall should, saying all sorts of welcomes. And then he turned, forgetting any business which was taking him to the hill, and must needs lead my horse with all care down to the hall. And as he went, whenever he saw any man of the place he shouted to him, and one by one men came running, until I had half the village after me. That was a good old Saxon welcome, and I could not find fault with it.