"Now, when the Mass was drawing to an end, and the Abbot and his deacon and subdeacon and the taper-bearers had already communicated in the Holy Mysteries, came the Heathen bursting into the church. And upon the very Altar, by the cruel hand of King Oscytel, was the venerable Abbot himself sacrificed, a true martyr and victim of Christ. All they who stood round and ministered with him were beheaded by the savages; and the aged men and children, as they fled from the Choir, were taken and questioned under the bitterest tortures, to make them show the treasures of the church. Dom[239] Asker, the Prior, was slain in the vestry, and Dom Lethwyn, Sub-prior, in the refectory. Behind him there followed close Brother Turgar, a ten year child, shapely, and of a fair countenance; who, when he saw his superior slain, besought earnestly that he too might be slain with him. But Earl Sidroc the Younger, touched with pity for the lad, stripped him of his cowl, and gave him a Danish cloak, bidding him follow everywhere his steps.... And thus, out of all who abode in the Monastery, old and young, he alone was saved; coming and going amongst the Danes throughout all his sojourn amongst them, even as one of themselves, through this Earl's favour and protection. [Footnote 239: _Dominus_ is thus abbreviated amongst Benedictines.] "Now when all the monks had been done to death by the torturers, and no whit of the Abbey treasures shown thereby, the Danes, with spades and ploughshares, brake open right and left all the sepulchres of the Saints round about that of St. Guthlac. On the right was that of St. Cissa, priest and anchorite, and of St. Bettelin, a man of God, erst an attendant on St. Guthlac, and of Dom Siward (the Abbot) of blessed memory. And on the left was that of St. Egbert, St. Guthlac's scribe and confessor, and of St. Tatwin, the pilot who guided St. Guthlac to Crowland.... All these did the savages burst open, looking to find treasure therein. And finding none, they were filled with indignation; and piling up all these holy bodies on a heap, in piteous wise, they set fire to them, and, on the third day after their coming, that is to say, on the 7th of the Kalends of October (September 25), they utterly consumed them, church and monastery and all.