wife, who did not hate her Norman lord quite so much as she ought to have done, Ivo had learned something of the love passages between Hereward and the Ladie Alftrude, and something also of the high fame which Hereward had obtained as a warrior: and he gnashed his teeth as he said to himself in Stamford town, “If this foul game last, my brother may go back to Normandie a beggar, and I may follow him as another beggar, for this Saxon churl will carry off Lanfranc’s rich ward, and besiege and take my house by Spalding, and the devil and the Saxon people being all with him, he will disseise me of all my lands! But I will to the Vicomte of Stamford, and ask for fifty lances to join to my own followers, and albeit I may not charge home to Spalding, I can ride to Ey and carry off the Saxon girl before this Hereward takes her. Great Lanfranc must needs excuse the deed, for if I take her not, and give her to my brother, the Saxon rebel and traitor will take her. I was a dolt and wife-governed fool ever to have let her depart from mine house after that christening feast. But haply now my brother is here! The instant we get her he shall wed her. We will carry a ring with us to Ey for that purpose!” While Ivo Taille-Bois was thus making up his wicked mind in Stamford town, the good Lord Hereward was advancing with one hundred brave Saxons from his fair house at Brunn to the fairer and statelier house of the Ladie Alftrude at Ey, having dispatched Elfric the ex-novice before him to make his way straight, and to appoint a place of meeting with his ladie-love, and a place of meeting between his friends and retainers, and her retainers and the friends of her house. Now from Brunn[142] to Ey is a much longer distance than from Stamford to Ey; but while the Normans were obliged to keep to the roundabout roads and to make many preparations beforehand (for fear of the fenners), the Englishmen, aided by skerries, and whatever the country people could lend them, struck directly across the fens. And in this wise it befel that Lord Hereward got a good footing within the Ladie Alftrude’s domain many hours before Ivo Taille-Bois and his brother could get within sight of the manor-house of Ey. On the bank of a river which flowed towards the Welland, and which formed the natural boundary of her far-extending lands, the hundred chosen warriors of the Lord of Brunn were met and welcomed by fifty armed men of the Ladie of Ey, and by fifty or sixty more brave men from the neighbouring fens, furnished with long fen-poles, bill-hooks, and bows. While these united warriors marched together towards the manor-house in goodly array, and shouting “Hereward for England!” the young Lord of Brunn, attended by none but Elfric, who had met him by the river, quitted the array and strode across some fields towards the little church of the township which stood on a bright green hillock, with a linden grove close behind it.