and he and his supporters being seated on one side of a great
room, and their opponents on the other, he rose and said, 'To Christ
himself, as judge, do I commit this cause!' Immediately on these words
being spoken, the floor where the opposite party sat gave way, and some
were killed and many wounded. You may be pretty sure that it had been
weakened under Dunstan's direction, and that it fell at Dunstan's signal.
_His_ part of the floor did not go down. No, no. He was too good a
workman for that.

When he died, the monks settled that he was a Saint, and called him Saint
Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well have settled that he
was a coach-horse, and could just as easily have called him one.

Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of this holy
saint; but, left to himself, he was a poor weak king, and his reign was a
reign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led by SWEYN, a son of
the King of Denmark who had quarrelled with his father and had been
banished from home, again came into England, and, year after year,
attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings away, the
weak Ethelred paid them money; but, the more money he paid, the more
money the Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten thousand pounds; on
their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds; on their next invasion,
four and twenty thousand pounds: to pay which large sums, the unfortunate
English people were heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came back and
wanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to marry into some
powerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers. So, in the
year one thousand and two, he courted and married Emma, the sister of
Richard Duke of Normandy; a lady who was called the Flower of Normandy.

And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like of which was never
done on English ground before or since. On the thirteenth of November,
in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King over the whole
country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, and murdered all
the Danes who were their neighbours.

Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and women, every Dane was killed.
No doubt there were among them many ferocious men who had done the
English great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swaggering in the
houses of the English and insulting their wives and daughters, had become
unbearable; but no doubt there were also among them many peaceful