Happily for England he did not. The Danes had seized Chippenham, in Wiltshire, and made that place their stronghold and headquarters. From Chippenham they sent out their light troops, moving rapidly here and there, devastating and murdering. For nine long years, growing every year weaker, Alfred fought them: in one year he fought nine battles. At the end of that time he found himself deserted, save for a few faithful followers: his country prostrate: everything in the hands of the enemy: his cause lost, and apparently no loop-hole or glimmer of hope left of recovery. No darker or more gloomy time ever fell upon this country. Everywhere the churches and the monasteries were pillaged and destroyed. All those—bishops, priests, monks, and nuns—who could get away had fled, carrying with them such of their treasures as they could convey. The towns were in ruins: the farms were deserted: the people had lost hope and heart: they bowed their heads and entered into slavery: their religion was destroyed with the flight or the murder of their priests. Their arts, their learning, their civilisation, all that they had once possessed, were destroyed in those nine years’ warfare: destroyed and gone—it seemed for ever. And the king, with his wife and her sister, and his children, and the few who still remained with him, had taken refuge on a little hill rising out of a broad marsh, whither the enemy could not follow him. In the after years Alfred was fond of talking over this time of desolation: he would recall the visions that came to him, and not only to him but to his wife as well: they both saw visions of consolation and of promise. Saint Cuthbert himself stood beside his bed and comforted him with promise of victory and honour. We can very well believe the vision. To Alfred: to his wife: the aid of the Saints was a thing to be invoked and to be looked for. Did they not pray daily for the help of the Saints? And who should aid the Saxons in their trouble but their greatest Saint—Cuthbert himself? In the sleep or the waking of night, what more natural than that Alfred should imagine that he saw and spoke with the Saint himself? To those who drive or walk across the dreary level of Sedgemoor, now drained by its deep dykes, and dotted with its village churches, there rises on the right hand the low hill of Athelney. One can realise, looking upon this hill across the flat land, which was once covered with bogs and quagmires, and reeds bending before the wind, how complete was the defeat of the king: how complete the victory of the Danes; which should drive Alfred to seek such a refuge. The Danish Conquest, like the Norman Conquest two hundred years later, seemed an achievement accomplished. No further opposition: no one asked what had become of Alfred—he had run away to Rome: he had gone into a monastery, perhaps: everywhere the Danes all over the country reported submission and the acceptance of their rule. And the old gods had come back again,