“That may be,” said he, half testily, with a curse on the tanner’s grandson and his French popinjays, “and our Englishmen are as good as any two Norsemen, as the Norse themselves say.” He could not divine, and Torfrida hardly liked to explain to him the glamour which the Duke of Normandy had cast over her, as the representative of chivalry, learning, civilization, a new and nobler life for men than the world had yet seen; one which seemed to connect the young races of Europe with the wisdom of the ancients and the magic glories of old Imperial Rome. “You are not fair to that man,” said she, after a while. “Hereward, Hereward, have I not told you how, though body be strong, mind is stronger? That is what that man knows; and therefore he has prospered. Therefore his realms are full of wise scholars, and thriving schools, and fair minsters, and his men are sober, and wise, and learned like clerks--” “And false like clerks, as he is himself. Schoolcraft and honesty never went yet together, Torfrida--” “Not in me?” “You are not a clerk, you are a woman, and more, you are an elf, a goddess; there is none like you. But hearken to me. This man is false. All the world knows it.” “He promises, they say, to govern England justly as King Edward’s heir, according to the old laws and liberties of the realm.” “Of course. If he does not come as the old monk’s heir, how does he come at all? If he does not promise our--their, I mean, for I am no Englishman--laws and liberties, who will join him? But his riders and hirelings will not fight for nothing. They must be paid with English land, and English land they will have, for they will be his men, whoever else are not. They will be his darlings, his housecarles, his hawks to sit on his fist and fly at his game; and English bones will be picked clean to feed them. And you would have me help to do that, Torfrida? Is that the honor of which you spoke so boldly to Harold Godwinsson?” Torfrida was silent. To have brought Hereward under the influence of William was an old dream of hers. And yet she was proud at the dream being broken thus. And so she said: “You are right. It is better for you,--it is better than to be William’s darling, and the greatest earl in his court,--to feel that you are still an Englishman. Promise me but one thing, that you will make no fierce or desperate answer to the Duke.” “And why not answer the tanner as he deserves?” “Because my art, and my heart too, tells me that your fortunes and his are linked together. I have studied my tables, but they would not answer. Then I cast lots in Virgilius--” “And what found you there?” asked he, anxiously. “I opened at the lines,-- ‘Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis Oratis? Equidem et vivis concedere vellem.’” “And what means that?”