.

THE SONG OF THE BOSHAM BELL.
There is a wondrous joy in the heart of a man who sees his own land again after long days at sea, but none of that joy might be mine as the long lines of the South Downs showed blue through the haze of the late September day.

Only the promise of Lodbrok's son, that on English shores I should not fight, helped me a little, else should I have been fain to end it all, axe to axe with Rorik on the narrow deck just now, or in some other way less manful, that would never have come into my mind but for the sore grief that I was in.

And these thoughts are not good to look back upon, and, moreover, I should have fully trusted my friend Halfden Lodbroksson.
Hardest of all was it to me when I knew where our landing was to be made; for if Glastonbury is the most holy place in Wessex, so should Bosham, the place of Wilfrith the Saint, be held in reverence by every South Saxon; because there, unmindful of his wrongs {ix}, he was content to labour with the wild heathen folk, teaching them, both in body and soul, the first lessons of our holy faith.
Well knew I the stories of those places which I saw as the ships crept up the haven, for Humbert our bishop had told me them many a time when as a child I sat on his knee and listened, wondering.
There was Selsea with its pile of buildings--Wilfrith's own--there the little cliff over which the starving heathen had cast themselves in their despair, and there, at last, the village, clustering round the little monastery that Dicul, the Irish monk, had founded, and where Wilfrith had first taught.

And now, maybe, I must see the roofs that had sheltered him, and heard the first praises of his converts, burnt before my eyes, and that while I myself was siding with the destroyers.
Then at last I took Halfden aside and told him my trouble, putting him in mind of the promise he had made me.
"Aye," said he, "I knew what made you so silent, and I have but waited for you to speak.