"
"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?"
"Say I was thrown from my horse afterward, or somewhat of that
kind," he said. "Or, stay, these will do it. I have been birds'
nesting. I thought these would please her. One gets falls while
scrambling after the like."
He put his hand into his pouch as he spoke.
"Plague on it, one is broken," he said, bringing out a raven's egg.
"There were two in that place where I stopped falling."
The ealdorman and I stared at him in wonder. It amazed us that in
such a moment a man should think of this trifle. And now he was
turning his soiled pouch inside out and wiping it with a tuft of
grass, grumbling the while.
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