"'Come, my men,' said my father, 'we shall beat these dainty Frenchmen, as our countrymen have beaten the Danes at Stamford, so the 'bode' here tells me. We go to fill the places of the gallant dead who fell around our Harold in the hour of victory—let there be no faint hearts amongst us, 'tis for home and hearth; good-bye, sweethearts,' and they rode away.
"They rode first to the Abbey town (Abingdon), and there made their vows before the famous 'Black Cross' of that ancient shrine; then all bent them for the long march to London town, where they arrived in time to march southward with the hero king, the last English king, and seventy-three years ago this very month of October the end came; blessed were the dead who fell that awful day on the heights of Senlac, thrice blessed—and cursed we who survived, to lose home, hearth, altar, and all, and to beget a race of slaves."
"Nay, not slaves, grandfather; thou hast never bent the knee."
"Had I been ten years older, I had been at Senlac and died by my father's side."
"But your mother, you lived to comfort her."
"Not long; when the news of our father's death came, she bore up for my sake—but when our patrimony was taken by force, and we who had fought for our true king were driven from our homes as rebels and traitors, to herd with the beasts of the field; when our thralls became the bondsmen of men of foreign tongues and hard hearts—her heart broke, and she left me alone, after a few months of privation."
"But you fought against the Norman."
"I fought by the side of the last Englishman who fought at all, with Hereward and his brave men at the 'Camp of Refuge'; and spent the prime of my life a prisoner in the grim castle of the recreant Lords of Wallingford."
And he lifted up his eyes, suffused with tears, to heaven.
"Why do you call the Lords of Wallingford Castle recreant?"