the ditches, and moving from the right-hand side of the road and from the left-hand side two bodies of Saxons, well armed with bows and billhooks, established themselves on the causeway just where Eustache’s long line was broken. In vain did the Normans nearest to it think of closing up that fatal gap; the Saxon serfs had so thrown about their timber on the road that they could not cross it without falling or stumbling. The Saxons, who had just got into the gap, making themselves shields of the hurdles, fought fiercely with bill and bow, and their comrades behind the willow trees smote the thin Norman lines on both sides with their arrows. Eustache of Ambleville, without seeing or knowing that his army was cut in twain, went charging along the causeway with his van, the Saxon arrows rattling on their steel jackets all the while; for here, as in the centre and rear, every tree that grew on either side the road covered some Saxon bowman. But short was Eustache’s career, for he found the causeway cut away before his horse’s feet, and a trench much broader than any horse could leap, cut across from ditch to ditch; and beyond this trench was a good barricade formed of felled trees, after the fashion used by that true Saxon the late Lord Abbat of Saint Alban’s: and from behind that breastwork and across the trench there came such a flight of arrows and spears and javelins, and other missiles, that neither Eustache nor any of his people could stand it. Then the trumpet in the van sounded the retreat. The Norman knight, commanding in the rear, had sounded the retreat before this, and finding that he could not force his way forward, he had begun to retrace his steps towards Cam-Bridge Castle: but this rearward knight had not gone further in arrear than Eustache had careered in advance ere he found the road broken, and a barricade of freshly cut willow trees laid across it with bowmen and billmen behind it. Horsemen and archers being mixed, as in the van, the rear turned back again along the causeway, as if determined to drive the Saxons from off the road and so unite themselves with the van from which they were severed; and thus van and rear were moving in opposite directions—were rushing to meet and hustle against each other on that narrow way, even as waves beat against waves in a mighty storm. Their meeting would have been very fatal; but they could not meet at all, for the Saxons that had made the great gap had been reinforced from either side; they had made barricades of the timber, and they plied with their sharp archery the heads of both the Norman columns, while other Saxons assailed those columns on their flanks, and still another band throwing a flying-bridge over the chasm, where Eustache had been made to halt, and turn back, charged along the causeway, still shouting, “Hereward for England! Pikes, strike home, for the Lord of Brunn sees ye!” And foremost of all those pikes was the Lord Hereward himself, who shouted