when benighted they could sleep with patience on a couch of
withered leaves, and not suffer with a cold in the head the next
day. They feared neither wolf nor bear, nor, for that matter,
anything save disgrace.

The imputation of cowardice, or of any mean vice, such as lying,
was only to be avenged by bloodshed. No gentleman could bear it and
retain his claim to the name. But there were higher duties
inculcated wheresoever the obligations of chivalry were fully
carried out: the duty of succouring the distressed, or redressing
wrong--of devotion to God and His Church, and hatred of the devil
and his works.

Alas! how often one aspect of chivalry alone, and that the worst,
was found to exist; the ideal was too high for fallen nature. Our
youthful readers will be able to judge which aspect was uppermost
at Aescendune under its first Norman lords.

Nought was changed in the outward aspect of the scene, save that a
stern Norman castle, with its dungeons and towers, was rising in
the place of the old hall, doomed to destruction because it was ill
adapted for defensive warfare.

Such defect had hardly been appreciated in the days of the old
English thane, for England had enjoyed half a century of
comparative peace, and her people had begun to build like those who
sat at peace beneath their own "vine and fig tree," ere the Normans
brought the stern realities of war into the unhappy land, or rather
of serfdom, oppression, and slavery, only varied by convulsive
struggles for liberty--always, alas! destined to be made in vain.