t day, if not one of
the absolute theowes or slaves, was, physically speaking, better off,
perhaps, than he has ever since been in England, more especially if he
appertained to some wealthy thegn of pure Saxon lineage, whose very title
of lord came to him in his quality of dispenser of bread [26]; and these
men had been ceorls under Harold, son of Godwin, now banished from the
land.

"Open the gate, open quick, my merry men," said the gentle Edward
(speaking in Saxon, though with a strong foreign accent), after he had
recovered his seat, murmured a benediction, and crossed himself three
times. The men stirred not.

"No horse tramps the seeds we have sown for Harold the Earl to reap;"
said the ceorl, doggedly, still seated on the gate. And the group behind
him gave a shout of applause.

Moved more than ever he had been known to be before, Edward spurred his
steed up to the boor, and lifted his hand. At that signal twenty swords
flashed in the air behind, as the Norman nobles spurred to the place.
Putting back with one hand his fierce attendants, Edward shook the other
at the Saxon. "Knave, knave," he cried, "I would hurt you, if I could!"

There was something in these words, fated to drift down into history, at
once ludicrous and touching. The Normans saw them only in the former
light, and turned aside to conceal their laughter; the Saxon felt them in
the latter and truer sense, and stood rebuked. That great king, whom he
now recognised, with all those drawn swords at his back, could not do him
hurt; that king had not the heart to hurt him. The ceorl sprang from the
gate, and opened it, bending low.

"Ride first, Count William, my cousin," said the King, calmly.

The Saxon ceorl's eyes glared as he heard the Norman's name uttered in
the Norman tongue, but he kept open the gate, and the train passed
through, Edward lingering last. Then said the King, in a low voice,--

"Bold man, thou spokest of Harold the Earl and his harvests; knowest thou
not that his lands have passed from him, and that he is outlawed, and
that his harvests are not for the scythes of his ceorls to reap?"

"May it please you, dread Lord and King," replied the Saxon simply,
"these lands that were Harold the Earl's, are now Clapa's, the
sixhaendman's."

"How is that?" quoth Edward, hastily; "we gave them neither to
sixhaendman nor to Saxon. All the lands of Harold hereabout were divided
amongst sacred abbots and noble chevaliers--Normans