under Roger Guiscard, the brother of Robert, and made prey of all that fair island seven years before the son of the harlot of Falaise crossed the Channel and came into England. Now Girolamo of Salerno had vowed upon the relics of all the saints that were in the mother-church of Salerno, that he would never live under the Norman tyranny; and sundry of the Norman chiefs that went over with Roger Guiscard to Palermo had vowed upon the crosses of their swords that they would hang him as a dangerous man if they could but catch him. So Girolamo shook the dust of Sicilie and Mongibel[120] from his feet, and, crossing the seas again, went into Grecia. But go where he would, those incarnate devils the Normans would be after him! He had not long lived in Grecia ere Robert Guiscard came over from Otrantum and Brundisium, to spoil the land and occupy it; therefore Girolamo fled again, cursing the Norman lance. He had wandered long and far in the countries of the Orient: he had visited the land of Egypt, he had been in Palestine, in Jerusalem, in Bethlehem; he had stood and prayed on the spot where our Lord was born, and on the spot where He was crucified; but, wearying of his sojourn among Saracens, he had come back to the Christian west to see if he could find some home where the hated Normans could not penetrate, or where dwelt some brave Christian people that were hopeful of fighting against those oppressors. He was roaming over the earth in quest of enemies to the Normans when Hereward met him, two years ago, in Flanders, and took his hand in his as a sworn foe to all men of that race. Was, then, Girolamo of Salerno a likely man to be a spy or fautor to the Normans in England? Thurstan acknowledged that he was not. “But,” said he, “some men are so prone to suspicion that they suspect everybody and everything that is near to them; and some men, nay, even some monks and brothers of this very house, are so envious of my state and such foes to my peace of mind, that whenever they see me more happy and fuller of hope than common, they vamp me up some story or conjure some spectrum to disquiet me and sadden me! Now, what said our prior and cellarer no later than last night? They said, in the hearing of many of this house, inexpert novices as well as cloister-monks, that the dark stranger must be either an unbelieving Jew or a necromancer; that when, at grand mass, the host was elevated in the church, he shot glances of fire at it from his sharp eyes; and that when the service was over they found him standing behind the high altar muttering what sounded very like an incantation, in a tongue very like unto the Latin.”