Her ears were full of the wild shouts of the besiegers and the shrieks of the injured, the awful clash of seax on helm, and hurtle and whiz of arrows. Again and again she woke from a fitful doze, thinking to hear the thunder of charging knights and the fierce 'Aoi!' of Leofric Ealdredsson and his carles, as they leaped forth from the cover of the palisades upon the foe. At last from such an awakening she sprang from the bed; better, she thought, to wake all night than suffer such awful dreams. But the awakening did not silence the cries. They were no dreams, those screams of terror, those head-rending shrieks for help, they were dreadful realities; and, rushing to the window, she gazed out with a beating heart at the western sky, which flickered and flared with strange and ghostly gleams. She ran back to the sleeping countess, and by the lurid light saw that she was smiling in her sleep. 'Wake! wake! Oh, Emma! dear countess! this is no night for sleep. Methinks the dawn is like to bring the last dread day! Alas! she sleeps like a young infant that knows not danger or woe. Wake, Emma! Thy life may hang on it!' Then the countess, opening her eyes dreamily, murmured, 'Thou hast brought good succour, Ralph!' The next moment she started up. 'Mary Mother! what is it, child?' 'There is murder in the air, Emma! See, the very sky is full of tokens. Listen! listen! Oh, saints in heaven! how they scream!' They did indeed! The countess sprang from the bed and rushed to the window also. 'They have fired the town!' she cried; 'they have fired the town!--the Saxon quarter! Sir Hoël said they would!' 'The Saxon quarter! Oh, my home, my home!' cried Eadgyth, and, pressing her hands to her ears in a vain effort to shut out the shrieks of the sufferers, she cowered, with closed eyes, upon the floor. 'Let us go to the great portal of the keep, whence we can see it,' said the countess. 'See it!' cried Eadgyth. 'Ah, Emma, no! I could not look! It would kill me.' But Emma went forth boldly, intent to know if anything could be done to rescue the victims. Norwich in those days was an open town. The walls and towers, of which portions still remain to gladden the eyes of archaeologists, were not built till some fifty years later, so that it was not possible to defend the town itself. Moreover, although the earl had found supporters amongst the Saxon and Anglo-Danish inhabitants of the older quarters, numbering more than one relative of Harold Godwinsson, the majority of the Norman denizens of the New Burg around the Chapel-in-the-Field remained loyal to William, and were ready to give all help to the besiegers. For this reason was it that the western sky had but flickered with the reflections of flames. It was the Saxon quarter by the river, the wooden tenements in King Street, which provided fuel for the bonfire. Looking east from the portal of the great tower, a grand and terrible spectacle confronted the beholders.