with that steel cap on his head, and that scarlet cloak over his shoulders, he looks every inch as stalwart and as handsome a warrior as the archangel Michael, whose portraiture we see in our church!” The person nearest in attendance on Lord Hereward was that lucky wight Elfric, who had been to seek him in foreign parts; but it was Elfric no longer attired either as a tattered menestrel or as a shaveling novice, but as something betwixt a blithesome page and an armed retainer. He too had more than one tear of joy in his eye as he trod upon the shore; but this tender emotion soon gave way to a hearty if not boisterous mirth, and so he kept shouting, “Make way for Hereward the Lord of Brunn!” and kept squeezing the hands of all the men and women and children he knew in Lynn, as they walked towards the convent where Hereward was to rest until daylight. Next to Elfric, the man that seemed most entirely devoted to the service and to the person of Hereward was a slight, slim man of middle stature and very dark complexion; his hair was long, and would have been blacker than the plumage of the raven save that time had touched it here and there with grey; his nose was arched like the beak of a goshawk; and his eye, that looked out from under a very black and bushy but very lofty eyebrow, was blacker and keener than the eye of any hawk or other fowl of prey. Some who had seen now and then a wandering Israelite, thought that this stranger looked marvellously like a Jew; but this was a marvellous mistake. None could think him either young or handsome; yet was there something about his person and in his face that none could help looking at, and then remembering for aye. Among the stout Saxons were some that could have taken the dark, slim stranger between their finger and thumb, and have squeezed the life out of him with as much ease as boys crack nuts; but there was a quickness and sharpness in the stranger’s eye that seemed to say he could outwit them all if he chose. On the way to the convent Hereward several times addressed him in some foreign tongue, and seemed by his looks to be taking advice of him.