Then once more the Saxon peasants swarmed from their huts like hornets from their hives and assailed the fugitives as they had before assailed those from Stephen's army. The proud Normans, whose language betrayed them in spite of their attempts at disguise, were robbed, stripped of their clothing, and driven along the roads by whips in the hands of Saxon serfs, who thus repaid themselves for many an act of wrong. The Bishop of Canterbury and other high prelates and numbers of great lords were thus maltreated, and for once were thoroughly humbled by those despised islanders whom their fathers had enslaved. Thus ended the second act in this drama of conquest and re-conquest. Maud, deprived of her brother, was helpless. She exchanged him for King Stephen, and the war broke out afresh. Stephen laid siege to Oxford, and pressed it so closely that once more Maud took to flight. It was midwinter. The ground was covered with snow. Dressing herself from head to foot in white, and accompanied by three knights similarly attired, she slipped out of a postern in the hope of being unseen against the whiteness of the snow-clad surface. Stephen's camp was asleep, its sentinels alone being astir. The scared fugitives glided on foot through the snow, passing close to the enemy's posts, the voices of the sentinels sounding in their ears. On foot they crossed the frozen Thames, gained horses on the opposite side, and galloped away in hasty flight. There is little more to say. Maud's cause was at an end. Not long afterwards her brother died, and she withdrew to Normandy, glad, doubtless, to be well out of that pestiferous island, but, mayhap, mourning that her arrogant folly had robbed her of a throne. A few years afterwards her son Henry took up her cause, and landed in England with an army. But the threatened hostilities ended in a truce, which provided that Henry should reign after Stephen's death. Stephen died a year afterwards, England gained an able monarch, and prosperity returned to the realm after fifteen years of the most frightful misery and misrule. _THE CAPTIVITY OF RICHARD COEUR DE LION._ In the month of October, in the year of our Lord 1192, a pirate vessel touched land on the coast of Sclavonia, at the port of Yara. Those were days in which it was not easy to distinguish between pirates and true mariners, either in aspect or avocation, neither being afflicted with much inconvenient honesty, both being hungry for spoil. From this vessel were landed a number of passengers,--knights, chaplains, and servants,--Crusaders on their way home from the Holy Land, and in need, for their overland journey, of a safe-conduct from the lord of the province.