not a Stuart, he was
the second of the Normans.'

'Very likely, very likely, Dora, my dear,' answered Harriet; 'I have
done with all those things now, thank goodness; I only know that seeing
the Cathedral was good fun; I did not like going into the crypts, I
said I would not go, when I saw how dark it was; and Frank Hollis said
I should, and it was such fun!'

Dora opened her eyes very wide, and Elizabeth said, 'There could
certainly never be a better time or place.'

Looking up, she saw poor Lucy's burning cheeks, and was sorry she had
not been silent. No one spoke for a few moments, but presently Anne
said, 'Alfred the Great is not buried in the Cathedral, is he?'

No one could tell; at last Helen said, 'I remember reading that he was
buried in Hyde Abbey, which is now pulled down.'

'There is a street at Winchester, called Hyde Street,' said Lucy.

'Yes, I know,' said Harriet, 'where the Bridewell is, I remember--'

'By-the-bye, Anne,' said Elizabeth, anxious to cut short Harriet's
reminiscences, 'I never answered what you said about Alfred and
Athelstane. I do not think that Alfred did more than present him with
his sword, which was always solemnly done, even to squires, before they
were allowed to fight, and might be done by a priest.'

'But when Athelstane is called a knight, and the ceremony of presenting
him with his weapons is mentioned,' said Anne, 'I cannot see why we
should not consider him to have been really knighted.'

'Because,' said Elizabeth, 'I do not think that the old Saxon word,
knight, meant the sworn champion, the devoted warrior of noble birth,
which it now expresses. You know Canute's old rhyme says, "Row to the
shore, knights," as if they were boatmen, and not gentlemen.'

'I do not think it could have been beneath the dignity of a knight to
row Canute,' said Anne, 'considering that eight kings rowed Edgar the
Peaceable.'

'Other things prove that Knight meant a servant, in Saxon,' said
Elizabeth.

'I know it does sometimes, as in German now,' said Anne; 'but the
question is, when it acquired a meaning equivalent in dignity to the
French Chevalier.'

'Though it properly means anything but a horseman,' said Elizabeth; 'we
ought to have a word answering to the German Ritter.'

'Yes, our language was spoilt by being mixed with French before it had
come to its perfection,' said Anne; 'but still you have not proved that
King Alfred was not a knight in the highest sense of the