great mustering ground, and made it a rallying point for all the sea-kings who had courage enough to brave the perils of the Baltic, and venture their lives, like the sons of Ragnar, for a kingdom. All who had aided in revenging the death of Ragnar, now invited their kindred and followers over to England. They came in shoals, until Northumbria was filled like an overstocked hive that awaits a favourable opportunity to swarm. That deep buzzing was soon heard which denoted that they were ready to swarm, for there was now no longer room for so many. The dark cloud passed with a humming sound through the Deiri, along the pleasant valley of the Trent, through the wild forest of Sherwood, whose old oaks then stood in all their primitive grandeur, until they saw before them the walls of Nottingham rising high above their rocky foundation. The inhabitants fled into the surrounding forest, or hurried over the Trent into the adjoining county of Lincolnshire, where Burrhed, the king of Mercia, resided. Alarmed by the rumour of such an host, the Mercian king sent into Wessex for assistance; and Ethelred, joined by his brother Alfred, who was now slowly rising, like a star on the rim of the horizon, hastened with their united armies to assist the Mercian king. But the Danes were too strongly entrenched within the walls of Nottingham to be driven out by the combined forces of Mercia and Wessex. The Saxons, well aware of the strength of these fortifications, were compelled to encamp without the walls, for the tall rocky barriers on which the castle yet stands, and the precipitous and cavernous heights which still look down upon the river Lene, formed strong natural barriers from which the Danish sentinels could look down with triumph, and defy the assembled host that lay encamped at their feet. After some delay, a treaty was entered into between the contending armies, and the Danes agreed to fall back upon York; the river Idel, which is so narrow that the points of two long lances would meet, if held by a tall chieftain on either shore, was the slender barrier that divided the opposing nations; a roe-buck from a rising summit could readily overleap it, and in an hundred places it was fordable. Ethelred and his brother Alfred, (who had now numbered about nineteen years,) led back their army into Wessex, and allowed the Danes to pursue their way quietly into Deiri. This forbearance is greatly censured by the early historians, but we must bear in mind that Alfred was not yet king, and that Ethelred but came up as an ally on the side of Mercia. He who was destined to become the greatest sovereign that ever sat upon the English throne, was at this period one of the most daring followers of the chase, for, although he was from childhood a martyr to a painful disease, yet where the antlered monarch of the forest led the way, there was Alfred to be seen foremost amongst the hunters. Young as he was, he had already married a Mercian lady, called Ealswitha, and some