"Sir monk," was the reply, "are you traitor to your king that you thus league yourself with his deadly enemies? All that is done this night is done by his order." "God will avenge the deed," said I. "Ye have not fought like men, but crept on like serpents, and slain those who, trusting to the faith of Christians, dwelt blindly in our midst. And now, what can we say? How can we hope to win our foes to God and Christ when we set at naught his precepts and despise his example?" "Sir monk, I have not time to listen to a homily; keep it for next Sunday, when I will try to attend. For the present--" Here he was interrupted by a loud cry which arose near us. "The wolf cub! the wolf cub! Slay him, and the work is complete." The cry, "Slay him! slay him!" was taken up by a dozen voices, when I recognised Alfgar, who by some means had learned the danger of his kinsfolk, and had come to share their fate. "Save him, sheriff!" I cried; "save him! He is a Christian. His mother was English." And I rushed forward myself, and saw that the poor lad had already been brought on his knees by more than one fell stroke. I held up the crucifix, which hung at my girdle, on high; I threw my arm over his head, and abjured them under the name of Christ, and as they feared the curse of the Church, to forbear. My brethren all aided me. Sullenly they dropped their weapons, and the sheriff, coming forward, seconded me, although in a very contemptuous manner. "Let him have the lad for his share of the night's work," he said. And so God gave me the poor lad's life. I had scarcely time to lay him on a sloping bank, where the light which shone so luridly from his burning home might fall upon him, when my brother Elfwyn appeared on the scene with a score of his men. He recognised us by our habits, and came and looked with me at the orphan as he lay on the bank. The boy had received no serious wound, but was exhausted, as much I thought by the violence of his emotions as by his injuries. He was wet through; his clothes were torn with brambles, for he had followed a straight path through six miles of tangled forest, from Aescendune. They had unfortunately given him a bed in a chamber which looked towards his home: he had chanced to wake, had looked from the window, seen the flames, and had started thither at once, swimming the moat when he could not cross the drawbridge--suspecting, doubtless, that he was surrounded by treachery. I had already poured a rich cordial down his throat, and he was coming to himself, my brother aiding me, when the sheriff, grand in his robe and chain of office, came up. "Good day, or rather night, to you, Thane of Aescendune," said he to Elfwyn; "we have had a fair night's work, and destroyed a big wasp's nest; have you come for your share in the spoil?" "I only ask permission to preserve life; your work has been of an opposite nature."