more than once, “Stop, Eustache! Run not so fast, Eustache of Ambleville! This is not the way to the Camp of Refuge!” Broken, confused beyond all precedent of confusion, disheartened, assailed on every side, and driven to desperation, the Normans began to leap from the fatal narrow causeway into the ditches, where many of the heavily-armed men and divers knights were drowned. Some surrendered to Lord Hereward on the road, and were admitted to quarter. Others were killed in heaps; and the rest, succeeding in crossing the ditches, and in getting through the willow groves, ran for their lives across the open country towards Cam-Bridge. Dry as the season was, there were still many bogs and morasses in those plains, and into these many of the panic-stricken fugitives ran and sank up to their necks. As Girolamo, the Salernitan, led one of the parties of Saxons in pursuit, he muttered to himself in his own tongue, “Those Normans in English bogs look like so many Mariuses[171] in the marshes of Minturnum!” Those were the most fortunate that sank where the sedges grew thick, or the bulrushes concealed them. Those who showed their heads above the bog were for the most part slain by spears or arrows. In all, not one-third of the force, which Sir Eustache had led forth a few hours before with so much pride and confidence, got back alive to the camp and castle at Cam-Bridge: all the horses had been drowned or suffocated, or wounded, and rendered useless, or killed or taken. Provisions, stores, and all the implements of the army had been lost; and, although Eustache of Ambleville had escaped with life, he had left his standard behind him in the hands of the Lord Hereward, who, after this signal victory, returned in triumph, and with his spolia opima, to Ely Abbey, where the monks in the choir sang “Te Deum Laudamus.” As for Eustache of Ambleville, he soon quitted the command of the post at Cam-Bridge, and cursing the Fen Country, as a place where knights and horses were of no use, he made the best haste he could back to London city. For many a long day the Normans left at Cam-Bridge would not venture outside the walls of their castle. It boots not to tell of what became of that other Norman force collected in Huntingdon for the invasion of the isle of Ely. Was it not overthrown and totally discomfited at Fenny Stanton? And was not this, and were not other victories gained by the Saxons from the Camp of Refuge, recited in the songs in praise of Lord Hereward, which the Saxon people now began to sing about the streets of our cities and great towns, even in the hearing of their Norman oppressors? CHAPTER XVI. THE TRAITOROUS MONKS OF PETERBOROUGH