How soon Hereward knew all this, or how he passed the winter of 1070-71, we cannot tell. But to him it must have been a winter of bitter perplexity. It was impossible to get information from Edwin; and news from York was almost as impossible to get, for Gilbert of Ghent stood between him and it. He felt himself now pent in, all but trapped. Since he had set foot last in England ugly things had risen up, on which he had calculated too little,--namely, Norman castles. A whole ring of them in Norfolk and Suffolk cut him off from the south. A castle at Cambridge closed the south end of the fens; another at Bedford, the western end; while Lincoln Castle to the north, cut him off from York. His men did not see the difficulty; and wanted him to march towards York, and clear all Lindsay and right up to the Humber. Gladly would he have done so, when he heard that the Danes were wintering in the Humber. “But how can we take Lincoln Castle without artillery, or even a battering-ram?” “Let us march past, it then, and leave it behind.” “Ah, my sons,” said Hereward, laughing sadly, “do you suppose that the Mamzer spends his time--and Englishmen’s life and labor--in heaping up those great stone mountains, that you and I may walk past them? They are put there just to prevent our walking past, unless we choose to have the garrison sallying out to attack our rear, and cut us off from home, and carry off our women into the bargain, when our backs are turned.” The English swore, and declared that they had never thought of that. “No. We drink too much ale this side of the Channel, to think of that,--or of anything beside.” “But,” said Leofwin Prat, “if we have no artillery, we can make some.” “Spoken like yourself, good comrade. If we only knew how.” “I know,” said Torfrida. “I have read of such things in books of the ancients, and I have watched them making continually,--I little knew why, or that I should ever turn engineer.” “What is there that you do not know?” cried they all at once. And Torfrida actually showed herself a fair practical engineer. But where was iron to come from? Iron for catapult springs, iron for ram heads, iron for bolts and bars? “Torfrida,” said Hereward, “you are wise. Can you use the divining-rod? “Why, my knight?” “Because there might be iron ore in the wolds; and if you could find it by the rod, we might get it up and smelt it.” Torfrida said humbly that she would try; and walked with the divining-rod between her pretty fingers for many a mile in wood and wold, wherever the ground looked red and rusty. But she never found any iron. “We must take the tires off the cart-wheels,” said Leofwin Prat. “But how will the carts do without? For we shall want them if we march.” “In Provence, where I was born, the wheels of the carts are made out of one round piece of wood. Could we not cut out wheels like them?” asked Torfrida. “You are the wise woman, as usual,” said Hereward.