esired to know. And
right soon did this great king entertain them to a different tune; for,
summoning all his true followers to meet him at an appointed place, where
they received him with joyful shouts and tears, as the monarch whom many
of them had given up for lost or dead, he put himself at their head,
marched on the Danish camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and
besieged them for fourteen days to prevent their escape. But, being as
merciful as he was good and brave, he then, instead of killing them,
proposed peace: on condition that they should altogether depart from that
Western part of England, and settle in the East; and that GUTHRUM should
become a Christian, in remembrance of the Divine religion which now
taught his conqueror, the noble ALFRED, to forgive the enemy who had so
often injured him. This, GUTHRUM did. At his baptism, KING ALFRED was
his godfather. And GUTHRUM was an honourable chief who well deserved
that clemency; for, ever afterwards he was loyal and faithful to the
king. The Danes under him were faithful too. They plundered and burned
no more, but worked like honest men. They ploughed, and sowed, and
reaped, and led good honest English lives. And I hope the children of
those Danes played, many a time, with Saxon children in the sunny fields;
and that Danish young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married
them; and that English travellers, benighted at the doors of Danish
cottages, often went in for shelter until morning; and that Danes and
Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of KING ALFRED THE GREAT.

All the Danes were not like these under GUTHRUM; for, after some years,
more of them came over, in the old plundering and burning way--among them
a fierce pirate of the name of HASTINGS, who had the boldness to sail up
the Thames to Gravesend, with eighty ships. For three years, there was a
war with these Danes; and there was a famine in the country, too, and a
plague, both upon human creatures and beasts. But KING ALFRED, whose
mighty heart never failed him, built large ships nevertheless, with which
to pursue the pirates on the sea; and he encouraged his soldiers, by his
brave example, to fight valiantly against them on the shore. At last, he
drove them all away; and then there was repose in England.

As great and good in peace, as he was great and good in war, KING ALFRED
never rested from his labours to improve his people. He loved to talk
with clever men,