Now Owen was silent for a little, and there came a shadow over his face as he answered, slowly and with his eyes on the far sea:
"No man's man am I, and I am but drifting Westward again at random. Yet I can say in all truth, that I am no wanderer for ill reason in any wise. I will tell you, Thane, here and alone, that there are foes in my home for whose passing, in one way or another, I must needs wait. Even now I was on my way to Bosham, where they tell me are Western monks with whom I might bide for a time, if not altogether. I was lost in the forest last night."
Now my father saw that some heavy sorrow of no common sort lay beneath the quiet words of the man before him, and he forbore to ask him more. Also, he deemed that in the Welsh land he would surely rank as a thane, for his ways and words bespoke more than his dress would tell. Therefore he said:
"Wait here with us for a while at least. There will be no more welcome guest."
"Let me be of some use, rather," Owen answered. "If I bide with you, Thane, and I thank you for the offer, let it be as I have bided elsewhere from time to time--as one of the household, not as an idle guest, if it were but to help the woodmen in the forest."
"Why, that will be well. I need a forester, and it is plain that you are a master of woodcraft. Let it be so. Yet I must tell you one thing fairly, and that is, that I am what you would call a heathen. I know that you are a good Christian man, for I saw you sign your holy sign before you ate last night and this morning. Yet I do not hate Christians."
"I had heard that all Sussex was turned to the faith," Owen said.
"If one says that all the men have gone to market, one knows that here and there one is excepted for good reason. It is not for a thane of the line of Woden to give up the faith of his fathers idly. I do not know what may be in the days to come, but here in the Andredsweald some dozen of us will not leave the old gods. It was the bidding of Ethelwalch the king that we should do so, but that is not a matter wherein a king may meddle, as it seems to us."
"I do not know why I should not bide with you, Thane, if so be that there is no hindrance to my faith."
"That there will be none. Why, the most of my folk are Christian enough. And if a man of the Britons did not honour his old faith it would be as strange as if I honoured not that of my fathers. I have no quarrel with the faith of any man, either king or thrall."