ise, and
the terse antithesis of the reproaches with which the woman rebuked
him, invest this incident with an interest which carries it every
where spontaneously among mankind. Millions, within the last thousand
years, have heard the name of Alfred, who have known no more of him
than this story; and millions more, who never would have heard of him
but for this story, have been led by it to study the whole history of
his life; so that the unconscious cow-herd's wife, in scolding
the disguised monarch for forgetting her cakes, was perhaps doing
more than he ever did himself for the wide extension of his future
fame.[2]

[Illustration: ALFRED WATCHING THE CAKES.]

Alfred was, for a time, extremely depressed and disheartened by the
sense of his misfortunes and calamities; but the monkish writers who
described his character and his life say that the influence of his
sufferings was extremely salutary in softening his disposition and
improving his character. He had been proud, and haughty, and
domineering before. He became humble, docile, and considerate now.
Faults of character that are superficial, resulting from the force of
circumstances and peculiarities of temptation, rather than from innate
depravity of heart, are easily and readily burned off in the fire of
affliction, while the same severe ordeal seems only to indurate the
more hopelessly those propensities which lie deeply seated in an
inherent and radical perversity.

Alfred, though restless and wretched in his apparently hopeless
seclusion, bore his privations with a great degree of patience and
fortitude, planning, all the time, the best means of reorganizing his
scattered forces, and of rescuing his country from the ruin into which
it had fallen. Some of his former friends, roaming as he himself had
done, as fugitives about the country, happened at length to come into
the neighborhood of his retreat. He heard of them, and cautiously made
himself known. They were rejoiced to find their old commander once
more, and, as there was no force of the Danes in that neighborhood
at the time, they lingered, timidly and fearlessly at first, in the
vicinity, until, at length, growing more bold as they found themselves
unmolested in their retreat, they began to make it their gathering
place and head-quarters. Alfred threw off his disguise, and assumed
his true character. Tidings of his having been thus discovered
spread confidentially among the most tried and faithful o