As we rode over the uplands we saw that the Sudbury men would do all honour to those who had fallen fighting beside them, for they made a great mound over Olaf's men, and Ailwin our priest was there with us to see that they had Christian burial with such solemnity as might be in those troubled days.

There might be no chanting of choir or swinging of censer at that burying; but when the holy rites were ended Ottar the scald sang the deeds of those who were gone, while the mound was closed.

And that would be what those valiant warriors loved to hear.
So passed the day, and then were our wounded to be seen; but at last I might sit quietly in the house on the green and speak all that I would with Ailwin, and we had much to say.

I know not if I longed or feared now to speak of Hertha, but I would do so.

Yet first I asked Ailwin how he himself had fared when the Danes came; for I had thought that he would have been slain.
"Aye, my son, that I should have surely been," he said, "but I found a hiding place until their fury was past, and the host swept on, leaving but a few among us.