The earl was really affected.

As Cuthbert rode up he held out both arms, and as his page alighted he embraced him as a father.
"My dear Cuthbert!" he exclaimed.

"What anxiety have we not suffered.

Had you been my own son, I could not have felt more your loss.

We did not doubt for an instant that you had fallen into the hands of some of the retainers of that villain Count; and from all we could learn, and from the absence of any dead body by the side of that of Cnut, I imagined that you must have been carried off.