cried aloud:

"I live, ye varlets! Behold the face of a chief who never yet forgave
coward! Ay, tremble more at me than at yon English, doomed and accursed
as they be! Ye Normans, ye! I blush for you!" and striking the foremost
in the retreat with the flat of his sword, chiding, stimulating,
threatening, promising in a breath, he succeeded in staying the flight,
reforming the lines, and dispelling the general panic. Then, as he
joined his own chosen knights, and surveyed the field, he beheld an
opening which the advanced position of the Saxon vanguard had left, and
by which his knights might gain the entrenchments. He mused a moment,
his face still bare, and brightening, as he mused. Looking round him, he
saw Mallet de Graville, who had remounted, and said, shortly:

"Pardex, dear knight, we thought you already with St. Michael!--joy, that
you live yet to be an English earl. Look you, ride to Fitzosborne with
the signal-word, 'Li Hardiz passent avant!' Off, and quick."

De Graville bowed, and darted across the plain.

"Now, my Quens and chevaliers," said William, gaily, as he closed his
helmet, and took from his squire another spear; "now, I shall give ye the
day's great pastime. Pass the word, Sire de Tancarville, to every
horseman--'Charge!--to the Standard!'"

The word passed, the steeds bounded, and the whole force of William's
knighthood, scouring the plain to the rear of the Saxon vanguard, made
for the entrenchments.

At that sight, Harold, divining the object, and seeing this new and more
urgent demand on his presence, halted the battalions over which he had
presided, and, yielding the command to Leofwine, once more briefly but
strenuously enjoined the troops to heed well their leaders, and on no
account to break the wedge, in the form of which lay their whole
strength, both against the cavalry and the greater number of the foe.
Then mounting his horse, and attended only by Haco, he spurred across the
plain, in the opposite direction to that taken by the Normans. In doing
so, he was forced to make a considerable circuit towards the rear of the
entrenchment, and the farm, with its watchful groups, came in sight. He
distinguished the garbs of the women, and Haco said to him,--

"There wait the wives, to welcome the living victors."

"Or search their lords among the dead!" answered Harold. "Who, Haco, if
we fall, will search for us?"

As the word left his lips, he saw, under a lonely thorn-tr