"Evan," I cried, "what you did for me at the ealdorman's gate is enough to win any pardon you may need."
"It is wonderful that, after all, pardon should come from you, Thane. Do you mind how I said to you that I hoped to win it otherwise through you when we took you on the Quantocks? It is good to feel as a free man once more."
"Free, and maybe honoured yet, Evan," I said; for I knew that he had risked his life for me and Owen. "Presently you shall come with me to Wessex, where none know you, and there shall be a fresh life for you. It is in my mind that what you brought on me was as a last hope."
"Ay, that is true, Thane."
And then I asked him to tell me all he knew of Owen, and of what had happened here, and how it came about that he knew aught. And as he told me it was plain that this was a true tale, for one could feel it so.
He had followed Owen, keeping himself hidden, after I went to Winchester, for there he knew that I was safe, and yet he would serve me if he could. So from the hillside where he lay he had seen the burning and the fight; and after Owen fell he followed them who bore him away, till he lost them in a grey mist that rolled from the hills and hid them in the darkness. Nor had he been able to find trace of them again, though he had hunted far and wide.
And so he waited for my coming, being sure that I would not be long. But he knew that they had gone toward what he called the lost valley, if it was not likely that they would dare so much as look into it.
"But," he said, "there was a priest with them, seeming to lead them. Maybe he would dare."
Into my mind at once came the certainty that this must be Morfed, but Evan knew nought of him. He had no more to tell me of this.