perhaps a little more,' replied the
captain.

'Ride back!' said the brother, 'and tell King Harold to make ready for
the fight!'

He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against that
force, that his brother, and the Norwegian King, and every chief of note
in all their host, except the Norwegian King's son, Olave, to whom he
gave honourable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The victorious
army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at the feast, in the
midst of all his company, a stir was heard at the doors; and messengers
all covered with mire from riding far and fast through broken ground came
hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed in England.

The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by contrary winds,
and some of their ships had been wrecked. A part of their own shore, to
which they had been driven back, was strewn with Norman bodies. But they
had once more made sail, led by the Duke's own galley, a present from his
wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden boy stood pointing
towards England. By day, the banner of the three Lions of Normandy, the
diverse coloured sails, the gilded vans, the many decorations of this
gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and sunny water; by night, a
light had sparkled like a star at her mast-head. And now, encamped near
Hastings, with their leader lying in the old Roman castle of Pevensey,
the English retiring in all directions, the land for miles around
scorched and smoking, fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman power,
hopeful and strong on English ground.

Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within a week, his army
was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman strength. William
took them, caused them to be led through his whole camp, and then
dismissed. 'The Normans,' said these spies to Harold, 'are not bearded
on the upper lip as we English are, but are shorn. They are priests.'
'My men,' replied Harold, with a laugh, 'will find those priests good
soldiers!'

'The Saxons,' reported Duke William's outposts of Norman soldiers, who
were instructed to retire as King Harold's army advanced, 'rush on us
through their pillaged country with the fury of madmen.'

'Let them come, and come soon!' said Duke William.

Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were soon abandoned.
In the middle of the month of October, in the year one thousand and sixty-
six, the Normans and the Eng