Only I will say this, that if we have not been altogether able to stay the coming of new Danish fleets to the long seaboard that must needs lie open to them here and there till our own fleets are greater, at least they know that the host may no longer come and go as they will, for Alfred's ships have to be reckoned with.
Now of ourselves I will add that Thora and I have many friends, but the best and closest are those whom we made in the days when Hubba came and fell under the shadow of the Quantock Hills, and they do not forget us.
Into our house sometimes come Heregar and Ethered, Denewulf the wise and humble, Odda, and many more, sure of welcome.

Only the loved presence of Neot the holy is wanting, for he died in Cornwall in that year of the end of the troubles, and I think that in him I lost more than any save Alfred himself.
Osmund went back to East Anglia for a time, but there he grew wearied with the wrangling of the Danish chiefs as they shared out the new land between them; so he bides with us, finding all his pleasure in the life of farm and field, which is ever near to the heart of a Dane.

With him goes old Thord, grumbling at the thralls in strange sea language, and yet well loved.

Not until he was wounded sorely in a sea fight we had and won under the Isle of Wight would he leave the war deck; but even now he is the first on board when the ships come home, and he is the one who orders all for winter quarters or for sailing.
Now for long I would that I might look once more on Einar of the Orkneys, my kind foster father, who still bided there in peace, hearing of him now and then as some Norse ship, on her way to join Rolf's fleet in the new land of the Northmen beyond our narrow seas, put into our haven for repair, perhaps after the long voyage, or to see if King Alfred would hire her men for a cruise against the common foe--the Danes.

And it was not until the news of his death came thus to me that the home longing for the old lands altogether left me; but since that day my thoughts have been, and will be, for England only.