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"This Welch hell hath broke loose." "And you are their beacon-fires? Then the whole land is upon us!" "Prate less," quoth Sexwolf; "those are the hills now held by the warders of Harold: our spies gave them notice, and the watch-fires prepared us ere the fiends came in sight, otherwise we had been lying here limbless or headless. Now, men, draw up, and march forth."

"Here we shall learn," said Sexwolf, "what the Earl is about and here, at present, ends my journey." "Are these the Earl's headquarters, then? no castle, even of wood no wall, nought but ditch and palisades?" asked Mallet de Graville in a tone between surprise and contempt. "Norman," said Sexwolf, "the castle is there, though you see it not, and so are the walls.

"Was it ever heard before," cried Sire Mallet de Graville, "that a Norman knight was expected to walk, and to walk against a foe too! Call hither the villein, that is, the captain." But Sexwolf himself here appeared, and to him De Graville addressed his indignant remonstrance.

"Ye outlanders and Frenchmen," said Sexwolf, showing the whole of his teeth through his forest of beard, "love boast and big talk; and, on my troth, thou mayest have thy belly full of them yet; for we are still in the track of Harold, and Harold never leaves behind him a foe. Thou art as safe here, as if singing psalms in a convent."

From these more refined contemplations he was roused by Sexwolf, who, with greater courtesy than was habitual to him, accompanied the theowes who brought the knight a repast, consisting of cheese, and small pieces of seethed kid, with a large horn of very indifferent mead. "The Earl puts all his men on Welch diet," said the captain, apologetically.

His countenance, though without the high and haughty brow, and the acute, observant eye of his comrade, had a pride and intelligence of its own a pride somewhat sullen, and an intelligence somewhat slow. "My good friend, Sexwolf," quoth the Norman in very tolerable Saxon, "I pray you not so to misesteem us. After all, we Normans are of your own race: our fathers spoke the same language as yours."

Man by man, under the charmed banner, fell the lithsmen of Hilda. Then died the faithful Sexwolf. Then died the gallant Godrith, redeeming, by the death of many a Norman, his young fantastic love of the Norman manners. Then died, last of such of the Kent-men as had won retreat from their scattered vanguard into the circle of closing slaughter, the English-hearted Vebba.

"Heed what my brother bids thee, Sexwolf," said Harold severely; "the hands that draw shafts against us to-morrow will not tremble with the night's wassail."

He divined at once that the Welch were storming the Saxon hold. Short time indeed sufficed for that active knight to case himself in his mail; and, sword in hand, he burst through the door, cleared the stairs, and gained the hall below, which was filled with men arming in haste. "Where is Harold?" he exclaimed. "On the trenches already," answered Sexwolf, buckling his corslet of hide.

"Hold! hold!" cried the pious knight, crossing himself, "is there no priest here to bless us? first a prayer and a psalm!" "Prayer and psalm!" cried Sexwolf, astonished, "an thou hadst said ale and mead, I could have understood thee. Out! Out! Holyrood, Holyrood!" "The godless paynims!" muttered the Norman, borne away with the crowd. Once in the open space, the scene was terrific.