felt before supper, and can better bear the weight of evil news, and more boldly face the perils that may lie in my path.” By words or by looks all the brotherhood re-echoed this last sentiment. CHAPTER II. THE SUCCURSAL CELL. The Abbat of Crowland’s letter, read aloud and slowly by the cheerful fire, had no note of gladness in it. It began “Woe to the Church! woe to the servants of God! woe to all of the Saxon race!” and it ended with, “Woe! woe! woe!” It related how all the prelates of English birth were being expelled by foreign priests, some from France and some from Italy; how nearly every Saxon abbat had been deprived, and nearly every religious house seized by men-at-arms and given over to strange shavelings from Normandie, from Anjou, from Picardie, from Maine, from Gasconie, and numberless other parts,[27] and how these alien monks, who could not speak the tongue which Englishmen spoke, were occupying every pulpit and confessional, and consigning the people to perdition because they spoke no French, and preferred their old masters and teachers to their new ones, put over them by violence and the sword! Jealousies and factions continued to rage among the Saxon lords and among those that claimed kindred with the national dynasties; sloth and gluttony, and the dullness of the brain they produce, rendered of no avail the might of the Saxon arm, and the courage of the Saxon heart. Hence a _dies iræ_, a day of God’s wrath. Aldred,[28] the archbishop of York, had died of very grief and anguish of mind: Stigand,[29] the English and the true archbishop of Canterbury, after wandering in the Danelagh and in Scotland, and flying for his life from many places, had gone in helpless condition to the Camp of Refuge in the Isle of Ely: Edgar Etheling, that royal boy, had been deserted by the Danes, who had crossed the seas in many ships to aid him; and he had fled once more in a denuded state to the court of Malcolm Caenmore, the Scottish king. In all the north of England there had been a dismal slaughter: from York to Durham not an inhabited village remained—fire and the sword had made a wilderness there—and from Durham north to Hexham, from the Wear to the Tyne, the remorseless conqueror, _Herodes, Herode ferocior_, a crueller Herod than the Herod of old, had laid waste the land and slaughtered the people. York Minster had been destroyed by fire, and every church, chapel, and religious house had been either destroyed or plundered by the Normans. Everywhere the Saxon patriots, after brief glimpses of success, had met with defeat and extermination, save and except only in the Camp of Refuge and the Isle of Ely; and there too misfortune had happened. Edwin and Morcar,[30] the sons of Alfgar, brothers-in-law to King Harold, and the best and the bravest of the Saxon nobles, had quitted the Camp of Refuge, that last asylum of Anglo-Saxon independence, and had both perished. All men of name and