fields of Ashdown, and over the country that now lies beside Ashbury, up to the very intrenchment at Reading--was the whole line of road strewn with the dying and the dead;--there the massacre of Croyland and Peterborough was revenged, and for days after the bodies of the Danes lay blackening in the sun. But terrible as was the slaughter, and complete the victory, a fortnight saw the Northmen again in the field, strengthened by reinforcements, who had landed upon the coast, and by these were the Saxons, in their turn, defeated. In the next battle that was fought between them, Ethelred received his death wound; and Alfred the Great ascended the throne of Wessex. Over the threshold of this perilous period must we now pass, to the presence of one of England's greatest kings. CHAPTER XXI. ACCESSION AND ABDICATION OF ALFRED. "In fortune's love--then the bold and coward, The wise and fool, the artist and unread, The hard and soft, seem all affin'd and kin;-- But in the wind and tempest of her frown, Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away."--SHAKSPERE. Alfred was scarcely twenty-two years of age when he ascended the throne of Wessex--it was on the eve of a defeat when the sceptre fell into his hands--when the Danes were flushed with victory, and nearly all England lay prostrate at their feet. With such a gloomy prospect before him, we can easily account for the reluctance he showed in accepting the crown, although it was offered to him by all the chiefs and earls who formed the witenagemot, when there were children of his elder brother Ethelbald alive, who, according to the Saxon order of succession, were the next heirs to the crown. But the Wessex nobles were already well acquainted with Alfred's talents, for during the twelve months prior to his accession, he had distinguished himself in eight pitched battles against the Danes, and had fought in many an unrecorded skirmish against parties of the enemy who were sent out to forage. Alfred well knew that the death of Ethelred would hardly leave him breathing-time, before he should again be compelled to take the field; that he also had to fight under the disadvantage which necessarily attends a defeat; while the enemy came swelling in all the triumph of recent victory; that he had to repair his late losses, and rouse afresh his subjects, who were still smarting with the wounds they had received from their conquerors, while the invaders were made more daring by every conquest, and more insolent by every concession. Such was the state of the kingdom into which Alfred was ushered by the death of his brother: nor was this all--he no doubt, with his clear eye, saw that it was no longer a mere struggle between two parties, where the one seeks to plunder, and the other to protect his property, but a contest for the very land on which they fought. The Danes had ceased to trust for safety to their "sea-horses"--they had abandoned "the road