High feast that day held the birds of the air and the beasts of the
field,
White-tailed erne and sallow glede,
Dusky raven, with horny neb,
And the gray deer the wolf of the wood.

The bones of the slain, men say, whitened the place for fifty years to
come.

And remember, that on the same day on which that fight befell--September
27, 1066--William, Duke of Normandy, with all his French-speaking
Norsemen, was sailing across the British Channel, under the protection of
a banner consecrated by the Pope, to conquer that England which the Norse-
speaking Normans could not conquer.

And now King Harold showed himself a man. He turned at once from the
North of England to the South. He raised the folk of the Southern, as he
had raised those of the Central and Northern shires; and in sixteen
days--after a march which in those times was a prodigious feat--he was
entrenched upon the fatal down which men called Heathfield then, and
Senlac, but Battle to this day--with William and his French Normans
opposite him on Telham hill.

Then came the battle of Hastings. You all know what befell upon that
day; and how the old weapon was matched against the new--the English axe
against the Norman lance--and beaten only because the English broke their
ranks. If you wish to refresh your memories, read the tale once more in
Mr. Freeman's "History of England," or Professor Creasy's "Fifteen
Decisive Battles of the World," or even, best of all, the late Lord
Lytton's splendid romance of "Harold." And when you go to England, go,