rished at Hastings.

Doubtless, he felt how great was the stake he had placed at the
hazard of the die, and having won it, he used it as his own.

Yet he was not all of stone. The Anglo-Saxon chronicler says of
him--"He was mild to those good men who loved God, although stern
beyond measure to those who resisted his will."

Hence the power which men like Lanfranc or Anselm had over him; and
it must be added that his life was exemplary as a private
individual, his honour unsullied, his purity unstained.

Stern was the race of which he was the head and the ruling spirit.
Well does the old chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, say:

"God had chosen the Normans to humble the English nation, because
He perceived that they were more fierce than any other people."

And we modern English must remember that we are the descendants of
old English and Normans combined. They came to "high mettle" the
blood of our race, and when the conquerors and the conquered were
moulded into one people, the result was the Englishmen who won
Crecy and Agincourt against overwhelming odds, whose very name was
a terror to continental soldiery, as Froissart abundantly
testifies.

Grieve as we may over the tyranny and wrong of the Conquest,
England would never have been so great without it as she afterwards
became.

Etienne knelt in the abbey chapel until the last worshippers had
gone out, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a gentle
voice said:

"The King awaits thee, my son, in the abbot's audience chamber."

In spite of his boldness, Etienne felt a strange tremor as he
passed through the cloisters and approached the dreaded monarch.

But he himself belonged to the same stern race, and when the
folding doors opened, and he saw the King seated in the abbot's
chair, he had perfectly recovered his composure. With winning grace
he bent the knee before his liege, and gazed into that face whose
frown was death.

But it was not frowning now; the expression was almost paternal,
for the Conqueror loved a gallant youth.

"Rise up, my son," he said; "the holy father here tells me you bear
stirring news."

"My liege, he hath spoken rightly. I have to tell of rebellion and
sacrilege; our English vassals have risen against us, and my brave
father has fallen by their hands; our castle is in their holding,
and they have driven the brethren of St. Benedict homeless from
their monastery."

"And who has dared this deed?"

"Wilfred, son of the