"
"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.
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