A common forest deer thief could tie him up." "I should have thanked one for slaying me at times," said Relf grimly.

"I prefer solid ground to shifty deck planks." So whether it was love of home or loathing of sea that took him back to Penhurst, Relf and I left Godwine on the next morning; and at the nunnery door waited Uldra, looking bright and cheerful and greeting us gladly as we came.

And it seemed to me that her troubles had passed from her, and that she was indeed glad to be leaving the walls of the place that was so prison-like.
Now that was a fair and pleasant ride over the Downs and among the forest paths through Sussex, and I look back on it as the brightest time that I had had in all the long years of trouble.

The joy of going back to my old home at Bures had been clouded with the knowledge of loss, and with the sight of the trail of war.

But here were none of these things.
We rode with twenty housecarles of Relf's behind us, and it was a new thing to me that I should see the wayside folk run out into the trackway to see us pass; that the farm thralls in the fields should but rise up, straightening stiffened backs and laughing, and stay their work for a moment to watch us; that no man who met us should ask with anxious face, "What news of the Danes ?" New it was, and most pleasant to Uldra also, for she had come through all the harried land, where the click of steel or the glint of armour had bidden the poor folk fly in terror, so that one rode through silent and deserted villages, and past farms where nought but the dogs told of life about the place.