At that dismal period the whole district had been devastated with fire and sword, and there were old men amongst the crowd who well remembered the destruction of the former hall and village by the ferocious Danes.  And now God had heard their litanies:  “From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us,” and had averted the scourge through the stout battle-axes and valiant swords of these warrior peasants and their noble leaders, such as Edmund, son of Alfgar.

Amidst all this joy the Lady Winifred of Aescendune stood upon the steps of the great hall to receive her lord, fair as the lily, a true Englishwoman, a loving wife and tender mother.

And by her, one on each side, stood her two children, Wilfred and Edith.  He was an English boy of the primitive type, with his brown hair, his sunburnt yet handsome features, the fruit of country air and woodland exercise; she, the daughter, a timid, retiring girl, her best type the lily, the image of her mother.

And now the noble rider, the thane and father, descended from his war steed, and threw himself into the arms of the faithful partner of his joys and sorrows, who awaited his embrace; there was a moment of almost reverential silence as he pressed her to his manly breast, and then arose a cry which made the welkin ring: 

“Long life to Edmund and Winifred of Aescendune!”

The bonfires blazed and illuminated the night; the bells (there were three at S. Wilfred’s priory hard by) rang with somewhat dissonant clamour; strains of music, which would seem very rough now, greeted the ears; but none the less hearty was the joy.

“The comet—­what do you say of the comet now?” said one.

“That it boded ill to the Northmen,” was the reply of his neighbour.

They referred to that baleful visitor, the comet of 1066, which had turned night into day with its lurid and ghastly light, so that the very waves of the sea seemed molten in its beams, while the beasts of the field howled as if they scented the coming banquet of flesh afar off.  Well might they stand aghast who gazed upon this awful portent, which had seemed to set the southern heavens on fire.

The banquet was spread in the great hall, and the returned warriors supped with their lord ere they retired to gladden their own families.  Little was said till the desire for eating and drinking was appeased.  But the minstrels sang many a song of the glories of the English race, particularly of the thanes of Aescendune, and of the best and noblest warrior amongst them—­Alfgar, the companion of the Ironside, the father of the present earl, who had been borne to his grave full of years and honour amidst the tears of his people, in the very last year of the Confessor.

But when the boards were removed, the thanks rendered to the God who had given all, the huge fire replenished, the wine and mead handed round, then Edmund the Thane rose amidst the expectant silence of his retainers.