at the menaced
danger to the standard, once more drove off the assailants.

But now all the enclosure was filled with the foe, the whole space seemed
gay, in the darkening air, with banderols and banners. High, through
all, rose the club of the Conqueror; high, through all, shone the crozier
of the Churchman. Not one Englishman fled; all now centering round the
standard, they fell, slaughtering if slaughtered. Man by man, under the
charmed banner, fell the lithsmen of Hilda. Then died the faithful
Sexwolf. Then died the gallant Godrith, redeeming, by the death of many
a Norman, his young fantastic love of the Norman manners. Then died,
last of such of the Kent-men as had won retreat from their scattered
vanguard into the circle of closing slaughter, the English-hearted Vebba.

Even still in that age, when the Teuton had yet in his veins the blood of
Odin, the demi-god,--even still one man could delay the might of numbers.
Through the crowd, the Normans beheld with admiring awe,--here, in the
front of their horse, a single warrior, before whose axe spear shivered,
helm drooped;--there, close by the standard, standing breast-high among
the slain, one still more formidable, and even amidst ruin unvanquished.
The first fell at length under the mace of Roger de Montgommeri. So,
unknown to the Norman poet (who hath preserved in his verse the deeds but
not the name), fell, laughing in death, young Leofwine! Still by the
enchanted standard towers the other; still the enchanted standard waves
aloft, with its brave ensign of the solitary "Fighting Man" girded by the
gems that had flashed in the crown of Odin.

"Thine be the honour of lowering that haughty flag," cried William,
turning to one of his favourite and most famous knights, Robert de
Tessin.

Overjoyed, the knight rushed forth, to fall by the axe of that stubborn
defender.

"Sorcery," cried Fitzosborne, "sorcery. This is no man, but fiend."

"Spare him, spare the brave," cried in a breath Bruse, D'Aincourt, and De
Graville.

William turned round in wrath at the cry of mercy, and spurring over all
the corpses, with the sacred banner borne by Tonstain close behind him,
so that it shadowed his helmet,--he came to the foot of the standard, and
for one moment there was single battle between the Knight-Duke and the
Saxon hero. Nor, even then, conquered by the Norman sword, but exhausted
by a hundred wounds, that brave chief fell [275], and the falchion vainly
p