"You say well, Eadwulf--you say right well," cried Edith, her fair face flushing fiery red, and her frame quivering with excitement. "You are _not_ worthy to be free. There is no freedom, or truth, or love, or honor, in your heart. Your spirit, like your body, is a serf's, and one would do dishonor to the soul of a dog, if she likened it to yours. Had _you_ been offered freedom, you had left all, mother, brother, and betrothed--had any maiden been so ill-advised as betroth herself to so heartless a churl--to slavery, and misery, and infamy, or death, to win your own coveted liberty. Nay! I believe, if they had been free, and you a serf, you would have betrayed them into slavery, so that you might be alone free. A man who can not feel and comprehend such a sacrifice as Kenric made for all of us, is capable of no sacrifice himself, and is not worthy to be called a man, or to be a freeman." Thus passed away that evening, and with the morrow came full confirmation; and the bold Saxon stood upon his native soil, as free as the air he breathed; the son, too, of a free mother, and with a free, fair maiden by his side, soon to be the free wife of a free Englishman. And none envied them, not one of their fellow-serfs, who remained still condemned to toil wearily and woefully, until their life should be over--not one, save Eadwulf, the morose, selfish, slave-souled brother. CHAPTER XII. THE DEPARTURE. "He mounted himself on a steed so talle, And her on a pale palfraye, And slung his bugle about his necke, And roundly they rode awaye." THE CHILDE OF ELLE. The glad days rapidly passed over, and the morning of the tenth day, as it broke fair and full of promise in the unclouded eastern sky, looked on a gay and happy cavalcade, in all the gorgeous and glittering attire of the twelfth century, setting forth in proud array, half martial and half civil, from the gates of Waltheofstow. First rode an old esquire, with three pages in bright half armor, hauberks of chain mail covering their bodies, and baçinets of steel on their heads, but with their arms and lower limbs undefended, except by the sleeves of their buff jerkins and their close-fitting hose of dressed buckskin. Behind these, a stout man-at-arms carried the guidon with the emblazoned bearings of his leader, followed by twenty mounted archers, in doublets of Kendal green, with yew bows in their hands, wood-knives, and four-and-twenty peacock-feathered cloth-yard arrows in their girdles, and battle-axes at their saddle-bows.