unto
you."

Ceawlin, the hot-headed young chieftain, pulled his long sword from its
bronze sheath, pointing with it to the figure upon the lumber-pile. His
face flamed with red rage; he shook his sword and shouted to his men
behind him. There was a rush; before the Romans could prevent, a score
of Saxons had leaped upon the pile, dragging down him who spoke; and the
first blood on Thorney had been shed. It was the signal; like warring
currents of the sea the two forces clashed. The beach was alive with
figures, struggling, shouting, or swaying in deadly silence in each
other's grip. Light flickered snakelike along uplifted blades which shot
above the sea of heads. It was a fight hand to hand, primitive, blind
with insensate rage, ever-smouldering, which wanted but the spark of
excuse to flame into the full flare of battle. The resistance of the
militarii was speedily overcome; outnumbered, lacking their leader, they
broke and fled. The Saxons, with shouts of triumph, gave chase over the
stony beach into the streets of the island, bent on the recapture of
their prisoner, and on wreaking vengeance upon those who had dared
oppose them.

IX

That night, in the house of Juncina the fish-wife, kneeled Eldris at the
window of the loft where she slept, looking out upon the house-tops with
her shoulders gleaming white through her loosened hair. Through the
window moonlight drifted, showing the squalor of the loft, and the bed
where Sosia, the daughter of Juncina, lay asleep.

Into the night she murmured love-words, happy in her dreaming, calling
to her love across the darkness.

"Is he in the wine-shop of Nicodemus, or is he in the moonlight by the
fords, telling his tales to those who crowd around him? Doth he think of
me, whose thoughts are all of him? Or have I angered him
over-deeply?--for never have I seen him since that day I said him nay.
Ah, Nicanor, was it love that said thee nay? This hour might I have been
lying in his arms, Love's happy handmaid--so happy! What if I had
yielded? I so want his love! What would God care? Mary, Mother, keep me
from these thoughts! I would that I could see him now--this same moon
doth shine upon him somewhere. Thou old moon, how many maids hast thou
looked down on since the beginning of the world, who have kneeled at
windows, and thought of a man, and been foolish?"

Sosia, in the bed, awoke, turned on her back, and raised herself upon an
elbow, showing her flat and heavy face