I never saw her again. The well that she found for us abideth for her memorial: clear and cool in every weather--the freshest in all the countryside. I have often thought of her since that day; and I think of her more often now than ever in the long night hours that are not the drowsy hours when one has grown old. Dreams, Gundred, dreams--waking dreams, but idle things none the less! But sometimes meseemeth that her very self is near me, standing as I best knew her, arms outheld, face aglow. She lived and died childless; the old King had made an oath, they say, for fear he might fall short of heaven. Once or twice evil tongues have made free to slander her fame! She was staunch, I know, and flawless; and yet her heart was quick and warm. Girl, I have ever recked little of the greater deal of the saints to whom prelates bid us pray. Of God and of his goodness I reck much; and this is the saint whom I worship before all others, crowned in this world or uncrowned--Edith the well-beloved Lady, whom all her people honoured and pitied. Richard the Scrob "Better than mine, Kenric--better than thine!" said Grim. "Ever his are taken, and ours are left. Who will look at our sheep and our oxen when the Scrob's are by?" Kenric withdrew the straw that he had been chewing from between his teeth, and ceased to stare at the white-limbed, red-spotted cattle in the pen before him. "Eh! he buyeth for the Bishop," he mumbled. "And he buyeth for the folk of Hereford town. And for the Abbot of Leominster. And for the Prior of Wenlock. His salted meat is rowed upon Wye and upon Severn to feed the merchantmen of Bristol. Grim, this Frenchman is a worker of spells." "And even so the beasts of his own breeding are such as thou wilt not meet with on any other man's land within the two shires. Heavier! Fatter! Sleeker! I would that his lord the devil would fly away with him soon! Hast thou but seen his woolsacks yonder? What other has such great store to sell? True, he can have little spinning at home, with no women." "I have not seen him--Richard the Scrob," said vague Kenric, returning to his straw-munching. "Are not these sold already----" "Kenric, stand not and grumble, with blind eyes," cried Munulf the maltman, who now accosted these two. "Here is a sight not often seen--the little widow, Kenric, the plump widow. Look up and behold the light of thine eyes, where she cometh, girt about with her husband's stalwart kinsfold." "Hey? who?" Kenric rejoined. "Who cometh yonder? Alftrude the widow of Winge? Oh, aye, it is a pretty woman enough----" "And should be rich woman enough," said Grim. "They are watchdogs indeed, the brethren of the Moor. I wonder that they let her show her nose at Ludford fair--so little and straight is it that many a man will love it, by heaven! My good wife pities Alftrude greatly. She will be widow to the end of her days, they ward her about so wilily."