So I bent myself to enjoy the feasting and the hunting parties the court made for us all; and pleasant it was, in all truth.

And every day fresh companies of the great folk of the land came in, till the town was full of thanes and ladies and their trains, gathered to see and hear what had come from beyond the seas.
So one day I rode with Werbode, who was all eagerness to see the land (to which his forbears would not come when Hengist asked them, by the way, as he told me) across the great heaths that lie north and east of Thetford, with Erling after us, leading two greyhounds which had been lent us from the royal kennels.

There were bustards in droves on these heaths, and roe deer to be found easily enough by those who had skill to seek them in the right places.

The bustards were nesting; but that is the time when one can best course the great birds, and many a good gallop we had after them.
Whereby we lost ourselves presently, and made light of it until we had wandered for some hours, and then remembered that we had never seen a man of whom to ask the way back to the town.

Of course we tried to make our way back by the sun, but ever there would seem to grow up a thicket or wood before us, which we must skirt, or some marshy lake shone across our path in a hollow of the heath; and it was slow work, and the horses grew weary as ourselves.