Laden with spoil, the merciless pagans next marched towards Huntingdon. Sidroc had charge of the rear-guard, which brought up the plunder. Two of the cars, containing the spoil of the monastery, were overturned in a deep pool, while passing a river, and as the sea-king lingered behind, and was busily engaged in superintending his soldiers, and aiding them to save all they could from the wreck, the child who had witnessed such scenes of bloodshed took advantage of the confusion, and escaped. Having concealed himself in a wood until the faint and far-off sounds of the Danish army had died away, he set off across the wild marshes alone, and in the course of a day and a night found his way back again to Croyland. Poor little fellow! the smoking ruins and the weeping monks, who had returned from their hiding-place in the island of Thorns, and who were then wailing over their murdered brethren, were the melancholy sights and sounds that greeted his return home;--a stern school was that for a child of ten years old to be nursed in! He told them all he had witnessed at Peterborough; they gathered around him to listen; they ceased to throw water on the burning ruins until his tale was ended; they left the headless body of their venerable abbot beneath the mighty beam which had fallen across it, nor attempted to extricate it until he had finished "his sad, eventful history." Then it was that they again wept aloud, throwing themselves upon the ground in their great anguish, until grief had no longer any tears, and the sobbing of sorrow had settled down into hopeless silence. That over, they again commenced their sad duty: the huge grave was deepened, the dead and mutilated bodies were dragged from under the burning ruins, and placing the abbot on the top of the funeral pile, they left them in one grave, covered beneath the same common earth, to sleep that sleep which no startling dream can ever disturb.