priest and teacher beware of that which the prophet said; _Canes muti non possunt latrare_, Dumb dogs cannot bark!’ But what are these Norman teachers and priests from beyond the sea but dumb dogs to the Saxon people, seeing they know no English and will not learn it?” “Yes,” said the ancient who had first spoken, “until these Normans came among us the bondman had one day in seven to himself, and on every other festival of the church he was allowed to forget his bonds, and to take rest and enjoyment, and to think of his soul; but now we be treated as if we had no souls.” “And,” said another of the serfs, “in former days the laws protected the money and goods of a bondman, if so be he could obtain any, for the Saxon law said that the master must not take from his slave that which the slave had gained by his industry. But now the serf cannot so much as call his life his property.” “Nor can any other true Saxon call anything his own, unless he stand up and fight for it, and prove strong enough to keep it,” said Elfric, who was well pleased to see and hear that his discourse on the difference between the old bondage and the present was not thrown away upon the upland serfs. Quoth the priest who had before spoken, “Our old Saxon laws were chary of blood, and held in tender respect the life of all men, whether they belonged to the nobility or were in a state of villainage. Few crimes were punished with death or even with mutilation. The commandment that man shall do no murder was not only read in churches, but was recommended and enforced in the laws and dooms of many Saxon kings. ‘If any one be slain,’ said the old law, ‘let him be paid for according to his birth.’ If a thane slew a churl, he had to pay for it....” “Aye,” said one of the serfs, “but the value of the life of a churl was not more than the price of a few bullocks; whereas hides of land or the worth of hundreds of bullocks was to be paid by him that slew a thane.” “Tush!” quoth Elfric, “thou canst not expect that the life of a churl can ever be priced so high as that of a noble, or that the same doom shall await the man that kills a Lord and the man that kills a peasant!” The priest and all the bystanders said that such an expectation would be too unreasonable, and that such a thing could never come to pass in this world: and so the discontented churl merely muttered that he thought, since it was allowed the churl had an immortal soul, even as the thane, that the life of a churl was worth more than a few bullocks; and then said no more about it, bethinking himself that even that price was better than no price at all, and that no Normans that he knew of had ever yet been made to make bot for maiming or killing a Saxon serf.