Flowers[82] there were none to strew upon the floor; but the floor of the hall was thickly strewed with sweet-smelling hay, and with the rushes that grow in the fens; and the feet of the loaf-men of the abbat and of the other servitors that waited on the lordly company made no noise as they hurried to and fro with the dishes and the wine-cups and drinking-horns. While dinner lasted, nought was heard but the voice of the abbat’s chaplain, who read the Psalms in a corner of the hall, the rattle of trenchers and knives, and, timeously,[83] such ejaculations as these! “How good this fish! how good this flesh! how good this fowl! how fine this pasty! how rich this wine!” But when the tables were cleared, and grace after meat had been said, and my Lord Abbat’s cupbearer had filled the cup of every guest with bright old Rhenish, Thurstan stood up at the head of the table, and said, “Now drink we round to the health of England’s true king, and this house’s best friend, the Saxon-hearted Harold,[84] be he where he will! And may he soon come back again! Cups off at a draught, while we drink Health to King Harold!” “We drink his health, and he is dead—we wish him back, and he is lying in his coffin in the church of the abbey of Waltham, safe in the keeping of the monks of Waltham! The wine is good, but the toast is foolish.” Thus spake the envious prior to the small-hearted cellarer. But the rest of the goodly company drank the wassail with joy and exultation, and seemingly without any doubt that Harold was living and would return. In their minds[85] it was the foul invention of the enemy—to divide and discourage the English people—which made King Harold die at Hastings. Who had seen him fall? Who had counted and examined that noble throng of warriors that retreated towards the sea-coast when the battle was lost by foul treachery, and that found boats and ships, and sailed away for some foreign land? Was not Harold in that throng, wounded, but with no deadly wound? Was it not known throughout the land that the Normans, when they counted the slain, not being able to find the body of Harold, sent some of our Saxon slaves and traitors to seek for it—to seek but not to find it? Was it not a mouldering and a mutilated corpse that the Normans caused to be conveyed to Waltham, and to be there entombed, at the east end of the choir, as the body of King Harold? And did not the monks of Waltham close up the grave with brick-work, and inscribe the slab, HIC JACET HAROLD INFELIX,[86] without ever seeing who or what was in the coffin? So reasoned all of this good company, who loved the liberties of England, and who had need of the sustaining hope that the brave Harold was alive, and would come back again.