a trumpeter, who had been ordered by the duke thus to turn back the Normans, began to sound the recall.  Then were seen the Normans turning back to face the English, and attacking them with their swords, and amongst the English, some flying, some dying, some asking mercy in their own tongue.”  The struggle once more became general and fierce.  William had three horses killed under him; “but he jumped immediately upon a fresh steed, and left not long unavenged the death of that which had but lately carried him.”  At last the intrenchments of the English were stormed; Harold fell mortally wounded by an arrow which pierced his skull; his two brothers and his bravest comrades fell at his side; the fight was prolonged between the English dispersed and the Normans remorselessly pursuing; the standard sent from Rome to the duke of Normandy had replaced the Saxon flag on the very spot where Harold had fallen; and, all around, the ground continued to get covered with dead and dying, fruitless victims of the passions of the combatants.  Next day William went over the field of battle; and he was heard to say, in a tone of mingled triumph and sorrow, “Here is verily a lake of blood!”

There was, long after the battle of Senlac, or Hastings, as it is commonly called, a patriotic superstition in the country to the effect that, when the rain had moistened the soil, there were to be seen traces of blood on the ground where it had taken place.

Having thus secured the victory, William had his tent pitched at the very point where the standard which had come from Rome had replaced the Saxon banner, and he passed the night supping and chatting with his chieftains, not far from the corpses scattered over the battle-field.  Next day it was necessary to attend to the burial of all these dead, conquerors or conquered.  William was full of care and affection towards his comrades; and on the eve of the battle, during a long and arduous reconnoissance which he had undertaken with some of them, he had insisted upon carrying, for some time, in addition to his own cuirass, that of his faithful William Fitz-Osbern, who he saw was fatigued in spite of his usual strength; but towards his enemies William was harsh and resentful.  Githa, Harold’s mother, sent to him to ask for her son’s corpse, offering for it its weight in gold.  “Nay,” said William, “Harold was a perjurer; let him have for burial-place the sand of the shore, where he was so madly fain to rule.”  Two Saxon monks from Waltham Abbey, which had been founded by Harold, came, by their abbot’s order, and claimed for their church the remains of their benefactor; and William, indifferent as he had been to a mother’s grief, would not displease an abbey.  But when the monks set about finding the body of Harold, there was none to recognize it, and they had recourse to a young girl, Edith, Swan’s-neck, whom Harold had loved.  She discovered amongst the corpses her lover’s mutilated body; and the monks bore it away to the church at Waltham, where