But after all, Alfred gained no decisive victory over his foes. He then tried to bind the Danes by Christian oaths, in making a treaty with them. The Danes were accustomed to swear by a certain ornament which they wore, when they wished to impose a very solemn religious oath; and to swear by this bracelet was to place themselves under the most solemn obligations they could assume. Alfred, however, was not satisfied with this pagan ceremony, but obliged them, in one treaty, to swear by certain Christian relics, which were held in great awe and sacredness by the Saxons. But the Danes broke their treaties with the most reckless defiance; and, as years passed, Alfred found his army broken, his resources exhausted, his towns and castles taken, until about eight years after his coronation at Winchester, as monarch of the most powerful of all the Saxon kingdoms, he found himself unable to resist the further attacks of the Danes, who had come over in fresh hordes, and captured his kingdom of Wessex; which calamity Alfred was powerless to prevent. [Illustration: ALFRED AND THE CAKES.] The Saxon chieftains and nobles fled in terror, and Alfred himself, with only one or two trusty friends, retired to the vast forests, which skirted the remote western frontiers of his once proud realm. It was during these homeless wanderings that the incident is said to have occurred, which has ever since been related of this bitter experience of want and misery in the life of Alfred the Great. The story is, that Alfred, weary and hungry, sought shelter in the miserable hut of a cow-herd, who gave him such poor fare as his lowly lot allowed. Alfred, while remaining with these simple folks, was one day engaged in mending his arrows, when the cow-herd’s wife, totally unconscious of the rank and station of her guest, requested him, in no polite terms, to watch her cakes which were baking in the coals, while she employed herself in other labors. King Alfred, absorbed in his sorrowful musings, forgot the injunctions of the ill-natured woman, and so allowed her cakes to burn; which, when she perceived, she gave him a good scolding; saying, “You man! you will not turn the bread you see burning, but you will be very glad to eat it when it is done!” This unlucky woman little thought she was addressing the great King Alfred.