“His friends are helping him to get them in,” quoth Martin, “for fear of the rascally Normans. A pleasant and peaceable country we have come back to.” “And a very strong fortress are they holding,” said Hereward, “against either Norman horsemen or Norman arrows. How to dislodge those six fellows without six times their number, I do not see. It is well to recollect that.” And so he did; and turned to use again and again, in after years, the strategetic capabilities of an old-fashioned English farm. Hereward spurred his horse up to the nearest gate, and was instantly confronted by a little fair-haired man, as broad as he was tall, who heaved up a long “twybill,” or double axe, and bade him, across the gate, go to a certain place. “Little Winter, little Winter, my chuck, my darling, my mad fellow, my brother-in-arms, my brother in robbery and murder, are you grown so honest in your old age that you will not know Hereward the wolf’s-head?” “Hereward!” shrieked the doughty little man. “I took you for an accursed Norman in those outlandish clothes;” and lifting up no little voice, he shouted,-- “Hereward is back, and Martin Lightfoot at his heels!” The gate was thrown open, and Hereward all but pulled off his horse. He was clapped on the back, turned round and round, admired from head to foot, shouted at by old companions of his boyhood, naughty young housecarles of his old troop, now settled down into honest thriving yeomen, hard working and hard fighting, who had heard again and again, with pride, of his doughty doings over sea. There was Winter, and Gwenoch, and Gery, Hereward’s cousin,--ancestor, it may be, of the ancient and honorable house of that name, and of those parts; and Duti and Outi, the two valiant twins; and Ulfard the White, and others, some of whose names, and those of their sons, still stand in Domesday-book. “And what,” asked Hereward, after the first congratulations were over, “of my mother? What of the folk at Bourne?” All looked each at the other, and were silent. “You are too late, young lord,” said Azer. “Too late?” “The Norman”--Azer called him what most men called him then--“has given it to a man of Gilbert of Ghent’s,--his butler, groom, cook, for aught I know.” “To Gilbert’s man? And my mother?” “God help your mother, and your young brother, too. We only know that three days ago some five-and-twenty French marched into the place.” “And you did not stop them?” “Young sir, who are we to stop an army? We have enough to keep our own. Gilbert, let alone the villain Ivo of Spalding, can send a hundred men down on us in four-and-twenty hours.” “Then I,” said Hereward in a voice of thunder, “will find the way to send two hundred down on him”; and turning his horse from the gate, he rode away furiously towards Bourne. He turned back as suddenly, and galloped into the field.