We love England, and are devoured by strangers; Godwin's cause is England's, and--stranger, forgive me for not concluding." Then examining the young Norman with a look of rough compassion, he laid his large hand upon the knight's shoulder and whispered: "Take my advice--and fly." "Fly!" said De Graville, reddening.

"Is it to fly, think you, that I have put on my mail, and girded my sword ?" "Vain--vain! Wasps are fierce, but the swarm is doomed when the straw is kindled.

I tell you this--fly in time, and you are safe; but let the King be so misguided as to count on arms, and strive against yon multitude, and verily before nightfall not one Norman will be found alive within ten miles of the city.

Look to it, youth! Perhaps thou hast a mother--let her not mourn a son!" Before the Norman could shape into Saxon sufficiently polite and courtly his profound and indignant disdain of the counsel, his sense of the impertinence with which his shoulder had been profaned, and his mother's son had been warned, the nuncius was again summoned into the presence-chamber.

Nor did he return into the ante-room, but conducted forthwith from the council--his brief answer received--to the stairs of the palace, he reached the boat in which he had come, and was rowed back to the ship that held the Earl and his sons.
Now this was the manoeuvre of Godwin's array.