thern sea-kings. Where
will ye find a chief with arm as strong, and heart as dauntless? By his
mother's side he is allied to your own lineage. And for the rest, if ye
receive him back to his earldom, not only do I, Harold in whom you
profess to trust, pledge full oblivion of the past, but I will undertake,
in his name, that he shall rule you well for the future, according to the
laws of King Canute."

"That will we not hear," cried the thegns, with one voice; while the
tones of Gamel Beorn, rough with the rattling Danish burr, rose above
all, "for we were born free. A proud and bad chief is by us not to be
endured; we have learned from our ancestors to live free or die!"

A murmur, not of condemnation, at these words, was heard amongst the
Saxon chiefs round Harold: and beloved and revered as he was, he felt
that, had he the heart, he had scarce the power, to have coerced those
warriors to march at once on their countrymen in such a cause. But
foreseeing great evil in the surrender of his brother's interests,
whether by lowering the King's dignity to the demands of armed force, or
sending abroad in all his fierce passions a man so highly connected with
Norman and Dane, so vindictive and so grasping, as Tostig, the Earl
shunned further parley at that time and place. He appointed a meeting in
the town with the chiefs; and requested them, meanwhile, to reconsider
their demands, and at least shape them so as that they could be
transmitted to the King, who was then on his way to Oxford.

It is in vain to describe the rage of Tostig, when his brother gravely
repeated to him the accusations against him, and asked for his
justification. Justification he could give not. His idea of law was but
force, and by force alone he demanded now to be defended. Harold, then,
wishing not alone to be judge in his brother's cause, referred further
discussion to the chiefs of the various towns and shires, whose troops
had swelled the War-Fyrd; and to them he bade Tostig plead his cause.

Vain as a woman, while fierce as a tiger, Tostig assented, and in that
assembly he rose, his gonna all blazing with crimson and gold, his hair
all curled and perfumed as for a banquet; and such, in a half-barbarous
day, the effect of person, especially when backed by warlike renown, that
the Proceres were half disposed to forget, in admiration of the earl's
surpassing beauty of form, the dark tales of his hideous guilt. But his
passions hurrying hi