It is in my mind that we could not have looked for such mildness at the king's hands.

For there is no denying that we are at his mercy.
"What say you, as a stranger, Ranald ?" "I have known the ways of Harald of Norway," I answered.

"I think that he would not have left a man of this host alive." Whereon the old warrior laughed shortly, and was silent while Guthrum bade us go back to Alfred and thank the king for his word, saying that an answer should be given as soon as the word of the host had been taken in open Thing.
So Alfred won Guthrum to the faith, and greatly did he rejoice when he heard what the Danish king had said.

I think he was more glad yet when he knew that Osmund would become Christian also, and he urged us both to be baptized at once.
"Let us be so with Guthrum," I asked.
"That will be fitting," he answered, "for I think you have won him over." But I hold that Guthrum and more of his chiefs had been won by the deaths of those martyrs of whom he spoke long before the choice was set before him.

One cannot tell how this was wrought in the mind of the Danes altogether by the hand of God.