Well, we must be going, for we have nine miles to ride, and the dark is not so far away.

But first, my cousins, come with me into this shrine, and let us pray St.Peter and St.Chad to guard us on our journey home." "Our journey ?" said Wulf anxiously.

"What is there for you to fear in a nine-mile ride along the shores of the Blackwater ?" "I said our journey home Wulf; and home is not in the hall at Steeple, but yonder," and she pointed to the quiet, brooding sky.
"Well answered," said Godwin, "in this ancient place, whence so many have journeyed home; all the Romans who are dead, when it was their fortress, and the Saxons who came after them, and others without count." Then they turned and entered the old church--one of the first that ever was in Britain, rough-built of Roman stone by the very hands of Chad, the Saxon saint, more than five hundred years before their day.

Here they knelt a while at the rude altar and prayed, each of them in his or her own fashion, then crossed themselves, and rose to seek their horses, which were tied in the shed hard by.
Now there were two roads, or rather tracks, back to the Hall at Steeple--one a mile or so inland, that ran through the village of Bradwell, and the other, the shorter way, along the edge of the Saltings to the narrow water known as Death Creek, at the head of which the traveller to Steeple must strike inland, leaving the Priory of Stangate on his right.

It was this latter path they chose, since at low tide the going there is good for horses--which, even in the summer, that of the inland track was not.