But first of all we must provide against a sudden descent on the coast. For the last two years events have succeeded one another at a quickened pace: surprize on surprize! There, under the opposite coast, lies a heathen fleet, ready to be down upon us without notice! The coast-wardens must be kept up to the mark, and I not to be seen in it! The mobility of these troopers defies calculation! How unexpected and startling was that occupation of Wareham last autumn! How daringly defiant of gods and men that breach of their most sacred oath! When by that perjury they had lulled our mistrust, they made a sudden rush for Exeter! Perfidy is part of their tactics. How wonderful, how divinely providential, that storm off Swanage, which wrecked the perfidious plan! And now, not to be baulked, they pounce upon Chippenham in time of truce and in mid-winter, thinking to capture me! How great in war is the unexpected! Without perfidy, I too must learn to meditate surprize; I must contrive how to distract their calculations, and strike where least expected. With some such a strain of thought as this (if I have followed him aright) now ruminated the undaunted king, in whom thought was the spring of action. Moreover, he reasoned thus with himself: ‘So long as winter lasts, they cannot follow me with the host by the way that I have come, but if they learn my whereabouts, they may easily find adventurers who would undertake to kill me. Wherefore I must not make myself too freely known, but proceed cautiously, and make proof of men before I trust myself to them. To most I must appear like some mounted yeoman hunter who follows the high deer that abound in the forests about these hills. And as for this sacred toy, this personal enigma, this Jewel of ceremony, which many eyes have beheld, I must no longer carry it about me, lest peradventure it make me known unawares. I will bury it in some convenient spot!’ * * * * * The western boundary of Wessex had for centuries been the Great Wood of which the ancient name still survives as a specific element in the historic designation of Frome Selwood.