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HOW THE LADY ELFRIDA SPOKE WITH OSWALD, AND OF THE MEETING WITH.
GERENT.
Gerent, the king of the West Welsh, as we called him, ruled over all the land of Devon and Cornwall, from the fens of the Tone and Parrett Rivers to the Land's End.

Only those wide fens, across which he could not go, had kept our great King Kenwalch from pushing Wessex yet westward, and along their line had been our frontier since his days until, not long before Ina came to the throne, Kentwine crossed them to the north and cleared the marauding Welsh of the Quantock hills and forests from the river to the sea, setting honest Saxon franklins here and there in the new-won land, to keep it for him.

It was out of those deep wooded hills that Morgan had come on the raid that ended so badly for his brother and himself, for the wasted country was yet a sort of no-man's land, where outlaws found easy harbourage, coming mostly from the Welsh side.

It would not need much to set the tide of war moving westward again, now that our men knew the fenland as well as ever the British learned the secrets of the paths.
Now that the time seemed to have come for him to leave Ina, Owen feared most of all that the long peace would end, for that would mean the rending of old friendships and certain parting from me.
How much longer the peace would last was very doubtful, and men said that it was only the wisdom of Aldhelm that had kept it so well, and now he was dead.