"But now they will aid you, in the land of the Saxon as in that of the
Frank."

"How?" cried a stray voice or two.

"Hush, O gentilz amys. Forward, then, O my liege, and spare them in
nought. He who has hitherto supplied you with two good mounted soldiers,
will now grant you four; and he who--"

"No, no, no!" roared two-thirds of the assembly; "we charged you with no
such answer; we said not that, nor that shall it be!"

Out stepped a baron.

"Within this country, to defend it, we will serve our Count; but to aid
him to conquer another man's country, no!"

Out stepped a knight.

"If once we rendered this double service, beyond seas as at home, it
would be held a right and a custom hereafter; and we should be as
mercenary soldiers, not free-born Normans."

Out stepped a merchant.

"And we and our children would be burdened for ever to feed one man's
ambition, whenever he saw a king to dethrone, or a realm to seize."

And then cried a general chorus:

"'t shall not be--it shall not!"

The assembly broke at once into knots of tens, twenties, thirties,
gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere
William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother
his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, the
assembly dispersed.

Such were the free souls of the Normans under the greatest of their
chiefs; and had those souls been less free, England had not been enslaved
in one age, to become free again, God grant, to the end of time!

CHAPTER IX.

Through the blue skies over England there rushed the bright stranger--a
meteor, a comet, a fiery star! "such as no man before ever saw;" it
appeared on the 8th, before the kalends of May; seven nights did it shine
[235], and the faces of sleepless men were pale under the angry glare.

The river of Thames rushed blood-red in the beam, the winds at play on
the broad waves of the Humber, broke the surge of the billows into
sparkles of fire. With three streamers, sharp and long as the sting of a
dragon, the foreboder of wrath rushed through the hosts of the stars. On
every ruinous fort, by sea-coast and march, the warder crossed his breast
to behold it; on hill and in thoroughfare, crowds nightly assembled to
gaze on the terrible star. Muttering hymns, monks hudded together round
the altars, as if to exorcise the land of a demon. The gravestone of the
Saxon father-chief was lit up, as with the coil of the