Then the rush of the long-winged falcon, and the cry of the heron, and the giddy climbing of both into the gray November sky as they strove for the highest flight, was all that I cared for, and we shook our reins and cantered after the birds as they drifted down the wind, soaring too high to breast it.
And when the heron was taken the dark thoughts were gone, and we rode back to Penhurst gaily, speaking no word of war or coming trouble, but of flight of hawk and wile of quarry, and the like pleasant things.
After this I saw no more of Earl Wulfnoth, and the winter set in with heavy snow and frosts, so that before long one might hardly stir into the woods, where the drifts were over heavy in the deep shaws to be very safe to a stranger.

But we had some good days when word came that the foresters had harboured an old boar in a sheltered place.

And to attack the fearless beast when he is thus penned and at bay amid snow walls, is warriors' sport indeed.
But while the snow fell whirling in the cold blasts from the sea round the great low-roofed hall I must needs bide within, and so I saw more of the maiden Sexberga than before, as she sat at her wheel with the lady, her mother, and the maidens of the house at the upper end of the hall, while the men wrought at their indoor work of mending and making horse gear and tool handles and the like, below the fire that burnt in the centre.
And so it had been like enough that soon I should have bound my heart to this pleasant place with ties that would have been hard to break, but for some words that came about by chance.

For there had begun to spring up in my mind a great liking for the words and ways of Sexberga, who had been pleasant in my eyes from the very first time that I had seen her and her mother in Earl Wulfnoth's courtyard.
And I think that there is no wonder in this, for these ladies were ever most kind to me, and long were the days since I had spoken with any in such a home as this.

Nor, as I have said, should I be blamed for forgetting old days at Bures in this wise.
Now, soon after Christmas, when there came one of those days when men must needs keep under cover, I sat by the fire trimming arrows, and presently it chanced that the lady and I were alone in the hall, for the maidens were preparing the supper elsewhere, and the housecarles had not yet come in from cattle yard and sheep pens.
And we talked quietly of this and that, as her wheel hummed and clicked cheerfully the while, and at last some word of mine led her to say: "I have heard little of your own folk, Redwald.