“Will you forget all I have told you in the first skirmish, like so many dogs when they see a bull? Keep together for five minutes more, the pot will not be cool before we get our sup of it. I verily believe that it is Waltheof, and that Gilbert has caught him already.” As he spoke, one part of the combatants broke up, and fled right and left; and a knight in full armor galloped furiously down the road right at them, followed by two or three more. “Here comes some one very valiant, or very much afeared,” said Hereward, as the horseman rode right upon him, shouting,-- “I am the King!” “The King?” roared Hereward, and dropping his lance, spurred his horse forward, kicking his feet clear of the stirrups. He caught the knight round the neck, dragged him over his horse’s tail, and fell with him to the ground. The armor clashed; the sparks flew from the old gray Roman flints; and Hereward, rolling over once, rose, and knelt upon his prisoner. “William of Normandy, yield or die!” The knight lay still and stark. “Ride on!” roared Hereward from the ground. “Ride at them, and strike hard! You will soon find out which is which. This booty I must pick for myself. What are you at?” roared he, after his knights. “Spread off the road, and keep your line, as I told you, and don’t override each other! Curse the hot-headed fools! The Normans will scatter them like sparrows. Run on, men-at-arms, to stop the French if we are broken. And don’t forget Guisnes field and the horses’ legs. Now, King, are you come to life yet?” “You have killed him,” quoth Leofric the deacon, whom Hereward had beckoned to stop with him. “I hope not. Lend me a knife. He is a much slighter man than I fancied,” said Hereward, as they got his helmet off. And when it was off, both started and stared. For they had uncovered, not the beetling brow, Roman nose, and firm curved lip of the Ulysses of the middle age, but the face of a fair lad, with long straw-colored hair, and soft blue eyes staring into vacancy. “Who are you?” shouted Hereward, saying very bad words, “who come here aping the name of king?” “Mother! Christina! Margaret! Waltheof Earl!” moaned the lad, raising his head and letting it fall again. “It is the Atheling!” cried Leofric. Hereward rose, and stood over the boy. “Ah! what was I doing to handle him so tenderly? I took him for the Mamzer, and thought of a king’s ransom.” “Do you call that tenderly? You have nigh pulled the boy’s head off.” “Would that I had! Ah,” went on Hereward, apostrophizing the unconscious Atheling,--“ah, that I had broken that white neck once and for all! To have sent thee feet foremost to Winchester, to lie by thy grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and then to tell Norman William that he must fight it out henceforth, not with a straw malkin like thee, which the very crows are not afraid to perch on, but with a cock of a very different hackle,--Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark.” And Hereward drew Brain-biter.