There is no wonder in it, for you have grown from childhood to womanhood since we fled from Bures, and I have gone through much that blotted your face from my mind.

Rather do I wonder where you have been all this time." "One secret I may not tell you today," she said; "and that is where our safest hiding place has been in sorest peril.

Some day I will show it you, for it is not far.

But for long did Gunnhild and I dwell with her brother in the forest and marsh fastnesses beyond the Colne.

There one might take to the woods when prowling Danes were near, though it was but twice, and but for a few hours then, that we had to do so.