"She saw nought of it," I said. "I believe that she had fainted with terror when you laid hold of her. The ealdorman came and took her to the village, and I do not suppose she knows that you have been lost."
"That is well," he said, with his great sigh. "Look over and see my hole."
I did not care to look over again, and, moreover, knew that I could not see it. I mind every jutting stone and twisted yew that is on the cliff there, to this day. However, one of the others went a little to one side, where Erpwald had appeared, and swung himself to the tiny ledge that had given him foothold as he came up, and so looked at the place. There was a long cleft between two layers of rock which went back into the cliff's face for some depth, with a little backward slope that had saved the helpless man from rolling out again, and there was a raven's nest at one end of it. One may see that cleft from below and across the gorge if one knows where to look, but not by any means from above, by reason of the overhang of the brink. It was plain that, as he thought, the horse's body, or maybe its shoulder, thrust him into the cleft, but it was well that he was senseless and so could not struggle, or he would have surely missed it. It is his saying that he had no trouble in getting into the place, but more in climbing out.
Now we called the good news to some of our people and the villagers who were on the road below, and they broke into cheers as they heard it. They could hardly believe that the man they had seen on the edge just now was Erpwald himself. Then we went down to the village, meeting the men with the ropes halfway, and so came to the first houses of the street, where the ealdorman was standing outside one of the better sort. He came to meet us, and I never saw anything like the look on his face when he saw Erpwald and heard his cheerful greeting. I told him how things ended.
"I have given a lot of trouble, as it seems" Erpwald said humbly; "but I could not help it."
"Trouble!" said the ealdorman. "Had it not been for you there would have been nought but trouble for me all the rest of my life."
He took Erpwald's hand as he spoke and pressed it, but he would not say more then. Maybe he could not. So he turned to me.
"It is all right, Oswald, for Elfrida is herself again, and she saw nothing after she looked into the gulf below her. I have told her nothing."
"Do not tell her anything, Ealdorman," Erpwald said. "No need to say what a near thing it was, or that I handled her like a sack of oats. She would never forgive me. But Oswald says it was all that I could have done. It was a good thing that he was there to take her."
"How are you going to account for the broken head, then?"