Elfric knew not what had saved him; when voices fell upon his ear, and the baying of a dog.
“Which way has that hag fled? Pursue her, she murders the wounded.”
The sound of rushing feet was heard, and Elfric felt that help was near, yet leaving him, and he cried aloud, “Help! help! for the love of God.”
One delayed in his course, and came and stood over the prostrate form. It was a monk, for the boy recognised the Benedictine habit, and his heart sank within him as he remembered how pitilessly he had helped to drive that habit from Glastonbury.
“I feel faint, even unto death, with loss of blood. Oh! remove me, and bear me home; if thou art a man of God leave me not here to perish in my sins.”
The piteous appeal went to the heart of the monk, and he knelt down, and by the aid of a small lamp, examined the wounds of the sufferer.
“Thou mayst yet live, my son,” he said; “tell me where is thy home; is it in Mercia?”
“It is! it is! My home is Æscendune; it is not far from here.”
“Æscendune—knowest thou Father Cuthbert?”
“I do indeed; he was my tutor, once my spiritual father.”
The monk started, then raised a loud cry, which speedily brought two or three men in the dress of thralls (theows) to his side.
“She will murder no more, father; the dog overtook her, and held her till we came; she was red with blood, and we knocked her down; Oswy here brained her with his club.”
“It is well—she deserved her fate; but, Oswy, look at this face.”
“St. Wilfred preserve us!” cried the man “it is the young lord. He is not dying, is he? She hadn’t hurt him—the she-wolf?”
“No, we were just in time, and only just in time; we must carry him home to his father.”
The monk had started for the expected scene of battle, intent on doing good, with a small party of the thralls of Æscendune, just after Edwy had left the hall; consequently, he knew nothing of the death of the thane or the subsequent events. Oh, how sweetly his words fell upon Elfric’s ears, “Carry him home to his father.”
A litter was speedily made; one of the thralls jumped into a willow tree which overhung the stream, and cut down some of the stoutest boughs. The others wove them with withes into a kind of litter, threw their own upper garments thereon in their love, placed the poor wounded form as tenderly upon it as a mother would have done, and bore him from the field, ever and anon stopping to relieve some other poor wounded sufferer, and to comfort him with the intelligence that similar aid was at hand for all, as the various lights now appearing testified.