But Hereward, that cunning captain and excellent soldier, _inclytus miles_, was not idle during this season: he went hither and thither throughout the country on the Wash and the whole fen country, calling upon the fenners to be steady and true to him and their native land; and to get their bows and arrows ready, and to sharpen such swords and axes, or bill-hooks and spear-heads, as they might have; and to be ever in a state of readiness to fight, if fighting could stead them, or to retreat with their cattle into the inaccessible places and the labyrinths among the waters and the meres. And the wandering menestrels and gleemen, who had been driven hitherward from all other parts of England, with Elfric, who was as good a gleemen as any of the number, went from one township in the fens to another, singing the Saxon songs which did honour to the Lord of Brunn, and told how often he had prevailed in fight over the Norman invaders. And at the sound of these songs the fenners gave up their peaceful occupations and prepared for war; while many hundreds went at once to join the standard of the Lord of Brunn. The men of Hoiland mounted themselves on their tall stilts, and came wading across marsh and mere unto the manor-house of Spalding; others came thither in their light skerries; others came on foot, with their fen-poles in their hands, leaping such waters and drains as could be leaped, and swimming across the rest like the water-fowls of the fens. Loud blew the Saxon horn everywhere: the monks of Ely could hear it in their cells by night, and their guests the Norman warriors, who ventured not to come forth beyond Hadenham or Turbutsey, could hear it in the hall or refectory by day. The country seemed all alive and stirring, and full of strange sights: but the strangest sight of all was that of the men from the shores of the Wash marching in troops on their high stilts, carrying their bows and quivers and swords and pikes at their backs, and looking, at a distance, with their long wooden shanks and their bodies propped in the air, like troops of giant cranes or herons. And ever as they went, and whether they went upon stilts or upon their own feet, or in flitting skerries, or in heavier and slower boats, these brave fenners sung in chorus the good songs which they had learned from the gleemen. In this wise the Lord of Brunn had a great force collected and in arms by the time of summer, when the waters had abated and the green fields were showing themselves, and the Normans were beginning to march, in the fantastic hope of encircling Hereward as hunters gird in a beast of prey. There were no traitors here, as at Ely, to show the short and safe ways across the fens; and Ivo Taille-Bois, the only Norman chief that could be said to know a little of the wild and difficult country, was a close prisoner in the house at Spalding, where he tried to beguile the tedium of his captivity by playing almost constantly at dice with the two Norman knights who had