"While she was of need busied, peasant-like, upon other affairs, she went anxious to the fire, and found the bread burning on the other side. She immediately assailed the king with reproaches. 'Why, man, do you sit thinking there, and are too proud to turn the bread? Whatever be your family, with such manners and sloth, what trust can be put in you hereafter? If you were a nobleman, you will be glad to eat the bread which you neglect to attend to.' The king, though stung by her upbraidings, yet heard her with patience and mildness, and roused by her scolding, took care to bake her bread as she wished." This fable has been variously narrated; some accounts making the disguised prince busy in forming for himself a bow with arrows and other instruments of war, while the woman gives vent to her indignation in rhyme: "To turn the burning cakes you have forgot, Prompt as you are to eat them when they're hot." In a short time the king's retreat became known to his adherents, who flocking to him in numbers, he soon found himself enabled to carry on a sort of guerilla warfare upon the nearest Danes. Growing bolder from the general success of these sallies, he at length determined upon more decisive measures; but before making the attempt, it was expedient to learn the actual condition of his enemy. With this view he assumed the costume of a Saxon minstrel, and ventured into the Danish camp at Chippenham, about thirty miles distant from his stronghold among the marshes. In this disguise he went from tent to tent, and, as some of the chroniclers tell us, was admitted into the tent of Guthrum himself, the Danish leader, his quality of gleeman assuring safety even to a Saxon. Having obtained the necessary information, he returned to Athelney, which he finally left on the seventh week after Easter, and rode to _Egbert's Stone_, in the eastern part of _Selwood_, or the _Great Wood_. Here he was met by all the neighboring folk of Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and Hampshire, who had not, for fear of the pagans, fled beyond the sea. Once more he encountered his enemies, and with a success almost as marvellous as the vision of St. Neot, which announced it, he routed the Danes at Ethendune with so much slaughter that they were glad to obtain peace on such terms as he chose to dictate. Guthrum embraced Christianity, and became the adopted son of Alfred.