whom I know, men whose wives and daughters lie in his slave-pen.

It comes to my mind-and I, do not ask how-that all the wild rascaldom of Baltic pirate-holds, ruffians from Wexford and the Liffey, from Laxford and Kyle of Tongue, the Romsdale and the Nordland fjords, are turned loose upon poor, stolid, stupid Berkshire. The Danes are on us!-have been upon us since March—sucking us white as a polecat sucks a lamb. The Dane: look you, there is no poetry, no glamour about the name to me, song and saga and romance are clean forgotten as if I had never heard them. The word stands for everything that is filthy and brutal and base, and ah! too, for all that is hopelessly cunning and nimble and strong! What the shark is to the swimmer such is this beastly foreign interloper to me, something hateful to God and man-(yet strangely permitted, like his father the Fiend)-lustful, butcherly strength, whom no truce will bind, no weapon overcome.,

All this comes home to me with a sinking of the heart. I know of a surety that the thatched roofs of Pangbourne and Sonning and the steadings of Theale have gone roaring aloft in flame; that the mill at Mapledurham is a smouldering wreck, that the pits of Coley have been rifled of half-tanned hide, and all the meal and malt, ale and candle-tallow, salt-beef and stock-fish of three counties has been swept into the stockaded "bury" built around the ruins of Lawrence Church. Infamies unspeakable go on within. Wherefore we have risen, these men and I, at the call of our Alderman, and have bidden our young thanes inside there to lead the fyrd. We are bound for the tryst at the ridge-way's end between Streatley and Basildon. Battle will be joined before night. So we are hearing mass while we may, and are by way of making our hearts clean against what may be

our last day's work. To win? Hardly: we have been beaten too often and too badly to hope overmuch. One thing we mean to do, we of the forlorn hope, cry mightily upon the White Christ, and die if needs be, but die killing each of us his man.

So, whilst the priest of Compton sings mass within, the priest of Midgham (whose church was burned last Sunday) shrives us under the church yew. See you the hot tears hopping down his rough cheeks? See again how young John of Thatcham and young Edgar of Beedon, who fought thrice about a certain Edith, having confessed, are a-making blood-brotherhood each with his fellow's knife upon his own shield-arm and are taking an oath to stand by one another this day, to set free or make an end. For Edith, look you, is in the slave-pen.

And now we are at Englefield Chase with the Kennet Valley below us all green and empty in the slant beams of a westering sun.

The enemy is even now coming, clattering boisterously to the field upon stolen nags, every fighting-man flushed and bold from his stirrup-cup. His horse-boy trots at his knee or holds by the tail and to him the master-thief tosses the rein as he lights down and strides in rippling mail to form the wedge behind his jarl.

Their two wings take ground to the north of the Roman road, close up and dress with something of the careless precision of master-craftsmen in the presence of 'prentices. 'Tis plain we are held cheaply albeit we have the upper ground.

Our youngsters are somewhat daunted by the manifest prompt nimbleness of the men below there. The main of us have never set eyes upon a Dane before and there is some crowding and craning of necks and more talking withal than our leaders would have;

they bid us hold our tongues and are obeyed.

Now is the word passed; it is beginning. We move slowly down the grassy slope and come to a stand between two clumps of lichened thorn; three great squares of Englishmen, all men of Wessex, one over against each wing of the pirates', the third, the Alderman's, in the rear.

Some of us are red and choking, others white and shaking with hardcurbed eagerness; a color a wise captain likes well to see. The thieves, who move more quickly than we, have taken fresh ground it seems, and mean us to fight with the sun in our eyes.

As there's no help for it we change front, not without shouldering and shuffling, are pushed and pulled into line again by our company-leaders, men who have seen the face of war before to-day. Hasty and roughtongued are they as they bid us be yare and not to crowd upon and hamper one another.

In the front rank go our two young thanes and their household; we in the middle throng see little save grey iron skull-caps and pairs of crimson ears in a mist of sunlit hair. Certain it is that we are none of the stoutest now that we are come to the point; some of us indeed are pitifully afeard. disarray is growing. If the enemy struck now!

The

A waft of wind blows upon our hot faces, a leader, one of the thanes belike, strides down the ranks, claps this weakling upon the shoulder, heartens up that other with a cheery word and is gone. Who was he? None met his eye; none recall his speech; his mail seemed of red gold; his stature taller than a tall man's. And the wind that went before him! Of a truth one of the saints from Paradise is with us this tide. Mightily uplifted of heart are we. Once again we are moving slowly.

From the enemy below come gusts of cackling laughter and shouts of mockery.

With us now is a great silence save for the singing of the churchmen in the rear.

Hark! Here it comes! With a rattle of axe-hafts on bucklers and a deepchested charging-shout the left wing of the Dane comes up the slope at a run.

Our thanes speak up confidently. Tramp! Tramp! There are some sickening moments of supreme suspense in which each of us gets his shoulders back and fills his chest with air before the two lines crash together.

Like leaping white flames the swords of the house-karls rise and fall. From all along our front goes up the clang and clatter of smitten wood and metal.

We are moving a little, pressing onward and pressed upon from behind, moving, but more and still more slowly.

Now we are at a standstill, are crushed together, rock and sway.

The swords in front are still, or nearly. It is knife and pommel work, the slippery edge of battle.

In

And this is war! Is this all? one moment every man of us realizes that the pirates' onset has spent itself, has failed. Ours has to come; now is our time! With a roar we link elbows, push, heave, thrust forward, crying upon every saint that we know, and on the Christ, their Master and ours. Nay, the lads and poor knave clubmen in the rear catch the word, clap shoulders to the backs of their covering files and strain mightily. And lo, are moving again foot by foot down the slope slowly at first, then faster, till we find ourselves in looser array stumbling onwards and downwards at a run over fallen men still or struggling, slipping in the wet hollows of shields, with a flicker of rose

we

tinted blades to the fore and a mighty and joyous crying of our fellows.

At the ruts of the Roman way we stagger but slacken not at all, through the high bracken and stunted thorn below we brush still whooping; no man of us but knows this cannot last; yon line of cankered ashes stands on the bank, below them the Kennet water creeps black and deep with the quaking duck-marsh beyond.

Again battle is joined with the din of a hundred smithies and a hustings voice. Again weight will have it-on we thrust.

But the fore-men are thinning, and we-we are pushed to the front, to the very fighting-line, and must grapple and pant knee to knee amid thudding blows with lusty, hot-cheeked Danes who face us wild-eyed and sweating, crying to one another to spread out and what-not contradictory cries, until one is pressed into their very embrace and the banging of axe upon target stops again for lack of elbow-room.

Those behind us stab with the point over our shoulders, and those behind them heave but as now we hove. Hurt men holding their bucklers low sway and lean but cannot fall. We are cumbered to the knee with those who are down, whose voices and hands come up from below.

Men who have hacked on doggedly with bent or broken blades suddenly drop them and grapple each a robber, winding naked fingers in beard or hair, feeling for the knee or the neck with the dirk.

First winds are spent, the scalebeam trembles, the event will fall to whom shall rally first.

Can no man raise a cry?

Our two young thanes are still upon their feet, bleeding but dangerous, hewing at the hairy forearm, stabbing at the tattoed throat, bearing up dinted shields to the heavy axes. God

bless their brave, pink faces! but they are mere kempery-men, dumb as horses, and we need leadership and a cry!

A voice! Whose? It is the great clear note of our lord's gleeman, "The bull is pinned! grip fast, ye ban-dogs! grip fast! grip!"

The dry roar and the pressure begin again; the throng of pirates gives ground foot by foot. The massed faces before us are all awork with impotent rage, all dark against the level red light of sunset save for the flash of teeth. Wherever the eye turns it meets cages of clenched or gnashing teeth.

Again it comes upon me that I have met these men before, their visages are all familiar. That high-cheekboned man whose hawk-nose bends down into a big moustache commanded some ship I once boarded. I cannot put a name to the place, Harwich, perhaps, or Maldon; it matters not, I know him again.

And that other with tufted eyebrow and bristly nostrils who is swearing so abominably, him, too, I know, and have seen in just such a taking on the fish-strand at Falmouth, or Kinsale was it, when the mackerel fleet of Easterlings put in for water and stores?

They have not room to use their weapons. I see a man gnawing the rim of his shield.

Back, still back they are borne until with lamentable cries and bitter the rear of that great crowd is toppling backward over the brink, toppling in bunches as bees fall into the skep, falling as a wall falls.

Splash! splash! they are in by tens, by scores. 'Tis a quag bottom and the banks are steep. Aha! the club-men and lads upon the flank are busy and joyful. . .

...

Meanwhile how goes it with our fellows? The horseguard is surrounded

The pirate

and the nags retaken. right charges, has shot its bolt, is wedged between our two squares (for the Alderman joins battle betimes). Hammered until they break, the thieves attempt to rally behind the blackened walls of Theale, but are broken again and utterly. They are in fear for their line of retreat, and whilst their front makes a stand their rear is melting, sneaking off towards Reading, and all along that five-mile causeway is flight and pursuit; a slowmoving cloud of dust bearing a fighting mob within and leaving a ghastly trail behind it.

Here the hunted enemy, thrust in upon his centre by freshly-mounted English upon his flanks, headed-off, followed up, waylaid, struggles onward with beard on shoulder, hoping only for escape, for his palisade, for night! But there is yet an hour of daylight, and it is England's hour. In the heart of that dusk, choking dust-cloud, beaten up by a thousand feet, the weakest of us plays the man. Poor chop-fallen lads that whimpered on the hill-side above ere the bicker began, and had need to be cuffed and rated into silence, are grown as fell as blooded mastiffs.

Kibed heels and empty bellies are clean forgotten. "They close full fast on every side, no slackness is there found." This is no time to take breath but to kill and to keep on killing. Every minute some fellow lustier or braver than his mates shoulders his way to the front to make his mark or to fall.

Every minute we are joined by some man of ours whom we had not missed, or whom we had seen down, and these new-comers are armed with the Danish axe and go in bright mail stript from some dead thief, and oh, but they are fain to put their findings to the proof!

Every Dane hurt is a Dane down,

and a Dane down is a Dane done for. Have at them! "Worry, good dogs! Worry!"

In these five miles we make thirty onfalls, cheering our men to the grim work with hoarse croakings, for every voice is cracked and every tongue is over-dry for speech.

'Tis a desperate hour and a pitiless; an hour of close fighting, up and down fighting, the straining, gasping, round and round tugging of locked bull-terriers.

At last the Forbury! The remains of the foe set their faces for a last rally; their camp-guard sallies, but is ill led, the gate jammed by meeting throngs who stab and trample one another in the dusk. We win the end of the drawbridge, we cut the ropes, we are all but through!

Then the ship-wards of the Red Jarl do after their kind and man the gate to cover the flight of their lord.

The freshest of our mounted men turn their horses loose and are for carrying the pass with a rush, but the entry is too strait and the swing of the axes is too terrible.

Thrice and four times our keenest rush in like dogs at a baiting but are beaten back, hewn down, swept from the planking to the water of the moat.

The press of fierce, weary men thickens at either end of the bridge, the footing between is slippery-wet and of the worst, we yearn and glare, but the Bury is still to take. Darkness is falling.

Here comes the old Alderman, sees all, strokes a grey beard, and speaks the word.

Three wain-loads of faggots stand nigh, in a trice a hundred hands are upon the poles, the axles, the tailboards; groaning and rocking towards the ditch they go and crash in. Over we storm, sword in teeth, a leg up here, a shoulder there. Help me, brother, and I will help thee!

We are inside at last and right quickly upon the backs of the warders of the gate. Do they blench? Not one of them. Their hour has come; throwing off their mail and fighting baresark they die there to the last man.

It is very fierce, this last, and long enough, albeit 'tis soon over. The gate-posts are splashed red to the height of a tall man and the sill is swimming as our stormers clamber over the rampart of dead. Many, oh, many of us are down! John of Thatcham who led the first rush lies underneath the bridge; Edgar of Beedon lives but to brain the last pirate and drops inside the gate.

Good lads! you have driven your furrow straight and may to sleep. Little Edith is home before you.

...

For us there is yet stern work to do in the thickening dusk ere such of the thieves as have 'scaped the storm hastily launch their keels, and with half-manned benches make off, fouling and bumping in the darkness down Sonning Reach for their Bury-in-theMarsh.

Now is the slave-pen broken, now are the hopples stricken off; what rushings to and fro, what anguished search, sudden recognitions, ecstasies unimaginable, griefs unspeakable!

Sounds of a triumphing host roar up in jets and spurts of song around us, and the heaped plunder of three shires is to be sorted, reclaimed and divided in a night!

For, look you, the tide has turned at last and we have won! Against all forecasting, by some amazing luck, we have won!

Now come the clergy and not too soon, and wisdom and order and selfrestraint come with them, and we bethink us of Him upon whom we cried in our bitter need.

Lo, now, as the broad, red moon pulls

herself slowly and all misshapen from the dank fen, how wife and husband, lass and lover, reunited, crowd the roofless shell of Lawrence Church and join all brokenly in the great Christian hymn:

We praise thee, O God!
We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!

In the hush that follows someone is speaking, pauses, begins again with the undefinable note of finality in his tone, "And now to God the Father, God the Son-"

And again in the pleasant, roofed-in, midsummer coolness I am standing among prosaic country-folk with heads bent to receive the benediction.

Surely I have slept, dozed at leasthumiliating experience! With eyes but half-used to the twentieth century I find myself gazing straight to my front. Thank God it is all over! There were times in the past history of our planet when our green, solid England spouted lava and rocked in seismic throes. Those times and the red wars are done.

Give peace in our time, O Lord! The wall over against me bears a mural tablet of yellowing marble:—