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Updated: June 29, 2025
So I was more at ease concerning him, and presently rode with Erpwald to Eastdean in the fair May weather to see the beginning of that church which should keep the memory of my father. And all I will say concerning that is that when I came to visit the old home once more I knew that I had chosen right.
He was buried in Chiswick churchyard, near the grave of William Hogarth. The father of John Keyse Sherwin was a hard-working man, living humbly enough at Eastdean, Sussex, earning his subsistence by cutting and shaping wooden bolts for shipbuilders. Up to his seventeenth year the son, born in 1751, helped the father in his labours.
Over us, too, went the long strings of wild geese, clanging in their flight in search of open water and it was the wolf month again, and even so had they fled on that day when Owen found me in the snow. And therewith we fell into talk of Eastdean, and dimly enough I recalled it all. I knew that an Erpwald held the place even yet, but I cared not.
A Downland road can be taken from here to Friston, Eastdean and Eastbourne, saving some miles of up and down walking, but the most enjoyable though more strenuous route is by the cliff path from Cuckmere Haven over the "Seven Sisters" cliffs to Beachy Head; a glorious six miles with the sea on one side and the Downs on the other, culminating in the finest headland on the south coast, 575 feet high, the magnificent end of the Downs in the sea.
Then I came to a place where the land began to draw upward more sharply, thickly timbered, with scattered rocks among the roots of the trees. Fox and badger and wildcat had their hiding places here, for I could trace them on all sides, and then I saw the track of a wolf, and that minded me, as that track in snow ever must, of Owen and the day when he came to my help at Eastdean.
"Am I often deceived thus?" he said. "I will even send some to ask of all the ins and outs of such another case hereafter. This Erpwald sent to me to say that Aldred and all his house had been slain by outlaws, and that he himself had driven them off and I believed him. After that I made over the Eastdean lands to him, and I take it that they were what he wanted.
And as I heard all, I knew that it had been for my sake that he was content to serve as a simple forester at Eastdean, for Ina told me that across the Severn among the other princes of the old Welsh lands he would have been more than welcome. I could say nothing, but I set my hand on his and left it there, and he smiled at me, and grasped it.
I had turned to go on my way when it came this time, and now I could have sworn that I knew the voice, though whose it was I could not say. "Who calls me," I cried, facing round. Then a chill that was not of cold wind and snow fell on me, for there was silence, and into my mind crept the knowledge of where I had last heard that voice. It was long years ago at Eastdean in half-forgotten Sussex.
So I told him that I was Oswald, the son of Aldred, the thane of Eastdean, thinking, of course, that all men would know of us, and so I bade him take me home quickly. "I have been hunting," I said, showing him my unsavoury prey, which by this time was frozen stiff in my belt. "Then I followed the hare this was after, and I cannot tell how far I have come."
I do not think that by this time any one knew, save the king, that I was not Owen's own son. I was wont to call him father always, and I cannot be blamed, for he was foster father and godfather to me, and well did he take the father's place to the orphan whom he had saved. And I had forgotten Eastdean, save as one keeps a memory of the home where one was a child.
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