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HOW WILFRID MET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN NORWICH MARKET.
Looking back on them, it seems that those five years with Carl the Great were long, but in truth they went fast enough.

With Ecgbert I went everywhere that war was to be waged, whether on the still half heathen, unwillingly christened Saxons, who were our own kin of the old land; or across on the opposite frontier, where the terrible Moors of Spain had not yet forgotten Roncesvalles.

For us it was fighting, and always fighting, and little of that most splendid court of the king did we see; for Ecgbert had set himself to learn all that he might, and he was not one to do things by halves.

Nor had I any wish to be anywhere but near him.
They were good years, therefore, if we had our share of danger and hardship to the full, and must needs bear the marks of it ever after.