If you would like to know more about Harold Hardrada, and what he did in his youth among the Turks at Constantinople, you can read a great deal in Sir Walter Scott's novel, "Count Robert of Paris," some of which, perhaps, is true. But, great fighter though he was, now was the time for his last battle; and on September 25, 1066, at Stamford- bridge, Harold of England met him and put him into the "seven feet of English ground" which he had promised him. It was a great victory, yet a sad one; for Tostig had refused the terms and fell fighting against his own countrymen, to be buried with the pirates whom he had captained. And in the South at Pevensey, four days later, William was landing.
Down came Harold from his victory, weary with fighting, weary with marching, yet sternly earnest to drive back the invaders and save the land from being harried, if he could. But October was half through before he met them at Hastings. All day long, on the 14th, they fought, and Harold held his own, though with the smaller army. Each man knew his place, and kept it, and William found them a wall of iron. At last his captains passed the word for a false retreat. The Saxons of Harold, with cheers, broke ranks to pursue, when round wheeled the Normans like hawks and plunged among them. Then came the crashing of battle-axe on helmet, and like a long, slow wave, the Norman line swept onward and the Saxon helms went down. A brief check around the summit of a hill, where Harold and his guards had rallied, —then arrows sped in flights upward to fall straight down among them. Their ranks were broken. And one by one each fell like a soldier in soldierly fashion where he stood with the loved captain among them. Just as, eight hundred years afterward in America fell the blue-clad soldiers around their general, Custer, fighting the Sioux Indians on the Western plains.
Thus William the Conqueror began to conquer England, and when he ended England was his own. Everywhere his captains built their castles, and where that captain was a Thorfin it was bad for the land. Still, now and then there was an Ulf among them, or one like him, who knew better how to govern; and all was well with them and theirs for many days.
Do you care to know what next the fragments of our Star beheld?
SPARK X.
HOW THE STAR SANG A SONG OF FREEDOM TO A CAPTIVE KING.
Once again all England was under one King. It was a sad time for the English, for the word of the Northman was the law, and wherever there seemed need for it, a grim, gray castle towered up solidly above the forest, with a great ditch, called a moat, dug around it; and behind that water and those walls of stone lived Normans, as they now were called.
Ulf, like the others, had his castle, and governed broad lands; but so well, and so well did Wulf and Wulf's son in his time, that nothing of note ever happened there, and therefore nobody ever heard of them. No man's house was burned by them with the owner in it. No one's cattle were carried off to the use of the castle without just payment. No one was killed without good cause, or what, in those days, was thought to be good cause. So this part of England lived long in placid quiet. There was no other castle within long marches through forest and bogland hard to pass over; and, for all of Ulf's peacefulness, if Thorfin, or some of his mates, wanted excitement, and thought it would be a good day to ride out and harry the land or besiege the home of a neighbour, someone would remember the old, old days around Sigurd's Vik, and suggest that to-morrow would be a better day than this to visit Ulf; the to-morrow that never came.
Daneshold they called it now; that is to say, the home, or hold of the Danes; and since they now spoke Norman-French more often than Saxon- English or Danish, Wulf's son was named Loup, which was pretty good French for "wolf;" and one more generation fled away under his rule, with nothing to record. Then came the day of his son in turn; Louis, or as he was now called in the new fashion, Louis of Daneshold.
Now Ulf had ploughed the sea so much in his youth that he was delighted to plough the land for the rest of his life. Wulf, as a boy, saw quite enough of sea-life to satisfy him. As it happened, Loup cared little for roaming; and the old traditions of the past were quite forgotten. But one day young Louis of Daneshold entered the armoury by chance, and came across a somewhat rusty old shirt of mail, quite out of style. He knew it must date back to the time of the vikings, and must have seen many a wild fray, and the fancy took him to polish it up and look for scars. In those days a lad was taught to shine up his armour as carefully as now he would be expected to polish his boots, and it was a pleasure to Louis to sit down with sand and buff-leather in the narrow window of the tower, and rub away at the steel until his arm ached. Then when the sunlight trickled over the mesh as brightly as it ever did, he began his scar-hunting. Then he rubbed his eyes with amazement, for scar there was none! Not a link was broken, not a dent. Only on one shoulder lay a thin shadow when the light was right, clearly the score of a swashing blow yet too shallow to be called a scar. What a wonderful thing was this!