While Chad was praying by a fountain near his cell, a hart, with quivering limbs and panting breath, leaped into the cooling stream. Pitying its distress, the saint covered him with boughs, then placing a rope round its neck, he let it graze in the forest. Wulfade came up, heated in the chase, and asked where the beast had gone. The saint replied, "Am I keeper of the hart? Yet, through the ministry of the hart I have become the guide of thy salvation. The hart bathing in the fountain foreshoweth to thee the laver of baptism, as the text says: As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."
Many other things did the saint set forth about the ministry of dumb animals to the faithful. The dove from the ark told that the waters were dried up.
The young prince replied, "The things you tell me would be more likely to work faith in me if the hart you have taught to wander in the forest with the rope round its neck were to appear in answer to your prayers." The saint prostrated himself in prayer, and lo! the hart burst from the thicket. The saint exclaimed, "All things are possible to him that believeth. Hear then, and believe the faith of Christ." The saint instructed him, and baptized him. The next day he received the Eucharist, and went home, and told his brother Rufine that he had become a Christian. The other said, "I have long wished for baptism; I will seek holy Chad." The brothers set out together. Rufine espying the hart with the cord round its neck, gave hot chase; the animal made for the saint's cell, and leaped into the fountain as before. Rufine saw a venerable man praying near. He said, "Art thou, my lord, father Chad, guide of my brother Wulfade to salvation?" He answered, "I am." The prince earnestly desiring baptism, Chad baptized him, Wulfade holding him at the font, after the manner taught by holy Church.
Then they departed, but returned daily to him. Werbode stealthily spied their ways and doings, and told their father that they had become Christians, and were then worshipping in Chad's oratory, adding that their conversion would alienate his subjects. The king set out in anger for the cell, the queen sending Werbode before to tell the princes of his approach, that they might hide. But Werbode only looked in at the window of the oratory, and saw them praying earnestly. He returned to the king, and told him that his sons were obstinate in their purpose of worshipping Christ. The king, pale with anger, rushed towards the oratory. He threatened them with his vengeance for breaking the laws of the land by becoming Christians, and bade them renounce Christ. Wulfade replied, "They did not want to break the laws, and that the king himself once professed the faith which now he renounced. They wished to retain his fatherly affection, but no tortures could turn them from Christ." The king rushed furiously upon him, and cut off his head. His brother, Rufine, fled, but his father pursued him, and gave him a mortal wound. Thus these two departed to celestial glory. Werbode was smitten with madness when they returned to the castle and told the murder in the ears of all. The queen buried her sons honourably in one stone tomb, and withdrew with her daughter, Werburga, to the monastery at Sheppey, and then to that of Ely.