away never to return. Greater still had been the woes of the monks if the restored abbat had been prone to spite and vengeance, for the Normans were willing to put a rod of iron in his hands, and would have rejoiced to see him use it; but Thurstan had a forgiving heart, and when he had deprived the worst of the officials of their offices, and had gotten the prior and the chamberlain removed to other houses far away from the Isle of Ely, he took pity upon all the rest of the convent, and did what in him lay to comfort them in their afflictions, and to supply their wants from his own store. Thus lived the monks, and thus the abbat, for about the space of three years: at the end of that time the good old Thurstan died, and was interred in the chancel among his mitred predecessors.[247] And then still worse befel the monks; for Duke William, or his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, brought over one of their most fighting and turbulent monks from Normandie, and made him lord abbat of Ely;[248] and this new abbat did not cease from persecuting the Saxon monks until two-thirds of them were in their graves, and their places supplied by French monks. These were the things which befel the convent after their foul rebellion against Abbat Thurstan, and their fouler betrayal of the Camp of Refuge. CHAPTER XXVI. A FIRE AND A RESCUE. It was dark night before the Lord of Brunn and his party got near unto the river Welland and Spalding, and great had been their speed to get thither so soon.[249] As they halted near the river-bank, under cover of some willows, they saw boats filled with Normans passing and repassing, and heard them hailing one another. In remarking upon this to his lord, the sword-bearer said, “Our barks on these waters have been overpowered! The Normans have been trying to encompass us by water as well as by land. No marvel were it to me to find them on every river between this and Trent or Humber; but it is not they that will stop good fenmen like us.” “Yet we be come hither in good time, for they may be preparing to lay siege to my ladie in the moated manor house. I would wager my best trained hawk against a kestrel that Ivo Taille-Bois is come hitherward from Stamford to recover what he calls his own!” So said Lord Hereward. Quoth Elfric: “An Ivo be here, we will beat him and catch him again! And when we catch him, we will not let him go, as we did, my lord, on the happy day of thy marriage.”