sts, it was not the custom of that holy court
to fall to without due religious ceremonial. The rage for psalm-singing
was then at its height in England; psalmody had excluded almost every
other description of vocal music; and it is even said that great
festivals on certain occasions were preluded by no less an effort of
lungs and memory than the entire songs bequeathed to us by King David!
This day, however, Hugoline, Edward's Norman chamberlain, had been
pleased to abridge the length of the prolix grace, and the company were
let off; to Edward's surprise and displeasure, with the curt and unseemly
preparation of only nine psalms and one special hymn in honour of some
obscure saint to whom the day was dedicated. This performed, the guests
resumed their seats, Edward murmuring an apology to William for the
strange omission of his chamberlain, and saying thrice to himself,
"Naught, naught--very naught."

The mirth languished at the royal table, despite some gay efforts from
Rolf, and some hollow attempts at light-hearted cheerfulness from the
great Duke, whose eyes, wandering down the table, were endeavouring to
distinguish Saxon from Norman, and count how many of the first might
already be reckoned in the train of his friends. But at the long tables
below, as the feast thickened, and ale, mead, pigment, morat, and wine
circled round, the tongue of the Saxon was loosed, and the Norman knight
lost somewhat of his superb gravity. It was just as what a Danish poet
called the "sun of the night," (in other words, the fierce warmth of the
wine,) had attained its meridian glow, that some slight disturbance at
the doors of the hall, without which waited a dense crowd of the poor on
whom the fragments of the feast were afterwards to be bestowed, was
followed by the entrance of two strangers, for whom the officers
appointed to marshal the entertainment made room at the foot of one of
the tables. Both these new-comers were clad with extreme plainness; one
in a dress, though not quite monastic, that of an ecclesiastic of low
degree; the other in a long grey mantle and loose gonna, the train of
which last was tucked into a broad leathern belt, leaving bare the
leggings, which showed limbs of great bulk and sinew, and which were
stained by the dust and mire of travel. The first mentioned was slight
and small of person; the last was of the height and port of the sons of
Anak. The countenance of neither could be perceived, for both