Then we met a picket, who, seeing we were fugitives, let us go on unchallenged.
But Wulfhere stopped and questioned the men, and got no pleasant answer as it seemed, for he caught us up growling, coming alongside of me, and saying--for Alswythe could not know the ways of war--that they would attack with morning light.

But I felt only too keenly, though I knew so little, that to fight the Danes when they had their foot firmly ashore, was a harder matter than to meet them but just landed.
We were so close to the town now that I asked Alswythe where she would be taken.

Already we were passing groups of fugitives from the nearer country, and the town would be full of them, to say nothing of the men of the levy.
She thought a little, and then asked me if she might not go to her father, wherever he was.

But I told her that he was but a guest of Osric, as it seemed.

Then she said that she would go to her aunt, who was the prioress of the White Nuns, and bide in the nunnery walls till all was safe.