"O my king," said Heregar, "why have you thus hidden yourself from us? All the land is mourning for you." Then Alfred looked sadly at him and wistfully, answering: "First, because I must hide; lastly, because I would be hidden: but between these two reasons is one of which I repent--because I despaired." "Nay," said Denewulf, "it was not despair; it was grief and anxiousness and thought and waiting for hope. Never have you spoken of despair, my king." "But I have felt it," he answered, "and I was wrong. Hope should not leave a man while he has life, and friends like these, and counsellors like yourself. Now have I been rebuked, and hope is given me afresh." Then he smiled and turned to me. "Why, Ranald my cousin, this is kindness indeed. I had not thought that you would bide with a lost cause, nor should I have thought of blame for you had you gone from this poor England; you are not bound to her as are her sons." "My king," I said truly, "there are things that bind more closely even than birth." I think he was pleased, for he smiled, and shook his head at me as though to say that he could not take my saying to himself, as I meant it. And then, before we could ask him more, he began to think of our needs. "Here we have been pressed for food, friends, for the last few days, and I fear you must fast with us. The deer have fled from our daily hunting, and the wild fowl have sought open water. Unless our fishers have luck, which seems unlikely, we must do as well as we can on oaten bread." Then Ethelnoth said: "There have been no fish caught today, my king." "Why, then, we will wait till the others return; and meanwhile I will hear all the news, for Ranald and Heregar will have much to tell me." So we told him all that we knew, and he asked many questions, until darkness fell. "Why are you here, lord king?" asked Heregar; "my hall is safe." "Your hall and countryside are safe yet because I am not there," Alfred answered, fixing his bright eyes on the thane. "The Danes are hunting for me, and were I in any known place, thither would they come. Therefore I said that now I choose to bide hidden. Moreover, in this quiet and loneliness there comes to me a plan that I think will work out well; for this afternoon, as I slept, I was bidden to look for a sign that out of hopelessness should come help and victory." Just then the dogs rose up and whined at the door, as if friends came; and there were cheerful voices outside. The door opened, and in stumbled Ethered, bearing a heavy basket of great fish, which he cast on the floor--lean green and golden pike, and red-finned roach, in a glittering, flapping heap. "Here is supper!" he cried joyfully, "and more than supper, for each of us is thus laden. Fish enough for an army could we have taken had we not held our hands. I could not have thought it possible." Whereat Alfred rose up and stared, crossing himself.