could repress his feelings no longer.

"Friend Wamba," said he, "of all those who are fools enough to serve
Cedric, thou alone hast dexterity enough to make thy folly acceptable to
him. Go to him, therefore, and tell him that neither for love nor fear
will Gurth serve him longer. He may strike the head from me--he may
scourge me--he may load me with irons--but henceforth he shall never
compel me either to love or to obey him. Go to him, then, and tell him
that Gurth the son of Beowulph renounces his service."

"Assuredly," said Wamba, "fool as I am, I shall not do your fool's
errand. Cedric hath another javelin stuck into his girdle, and thou
knowest he does not always miss his mark."

"I care not," replied Gurth, "how soon he makes a mark of me. Yesterday
he left Wilfred, my young master, in his blood. To-day he has striven to
kill before my face the only other living creature that ever showed me
kindness. By St Edmund, St Dunstan, St Withold, St Edward the Confessor,
and every other Saxon saint in the calendar," (for Cedric never swore
by any that was not of Saxon lineage, and all his household had the same
limited devotion,) "I will never forgive him!"

"To my thinking now," said the Jester, who was frequently wont to act
as peace-maker in the family, "our master did not propose to hurt Fangs,
but only to affright him. For, if you observed, he rose in his stirrups,
as thereby meaning to overcast the mark; and so he would have done,
but Fangs happening to bound up at the very moment, received a scratch,
which I will be bound to heal with a penny's breadth of tar."

"If I thought so," said Gurth--"if I could but think so--but no--I saw
the javelin was well aimed--I heard it whizz through the air with all
the wrathful malevolence of him who cast it, and it quivered after it
had pitched in the ground, as if with regret for having missed its mark.
By the hog dear to St Anthony, I renounce him!"

And the indignant swineherd resumed his sullen silence, which no efforts
of the Jester could again induce him to break.

Meanwhile Cedric and Athelstane, the leaders of the troop, conversed
together on the state of the land, on the dissensions of the royal
family, on the feuds and quarrels among the Norman nobles, and on the
chance which there was that the oppressed Saxons might be able to
free themselves from the yoke of the Normans, or at least to elevate
themselves into national consequence and independence, during the ci