had come in from the village, sturdy, open-featured men, prosperously dressed in woollen tunics reaching to the knees, fastened with a brooch of bone. The serfs knelt at the back, and as the deep pattering Latin rolled down the church every head was bent low in reverence.

Although among nearly all of them there was such a contrast between conduct and belief, yet, at the daily mystery and miracle of the Mass, every evil brain was filled with reverence and awe. When the Host was raised—the very body of Christ—to them all, you may judge how it moved every human heart.

The system which held them all was a very easy and pleasant system. Unconditional submission to the Church, and belief in her mysteries, ensured the redemption of sins and the joys of heaven hereafter. To the popular mind, my Lords the Saints and the Blessed Virgin were great, good-humoured people, always approachable by an Ave and a little private understanding with the priest. It was, indeed, the pleasantest and easiest of all religious systems.

This, then, was the ordinary attitude of men and women towards the unseen, and it helps to explain the wickedness of the time. Yet it must not be thought that in this dark tapestry there were no lighter threads. The saints of God were still to be found on earth. Bright lines of gold and white and silver ran through the warp and woof, and we shall meet with more than one fine and Christian character in this story of Hyla.

The stately monotone went on. Huber and John, the two men-at-arms who had hurried the poor serf girls into the castle the night before, knelt in reverence, and beat their breasts.

"The Lord is debonair," Huber muttered to himself. Alice de la Bourne forgot her ill temper and petty dislike of pretty Gundruda, her maid, and fervently made the sign of the cross. Lewin alone, of all that kneeling throng, was uninfluenced by the ceremony and full of earthly thoughts.

After Mass was over, Anselm remained kneeling, repeating prayers, while the congregation filed out into the sunlight. A little significant incident happened on the very threshold. A poor serf had become possessed of a rosary made from the shells of a pretty little pink and green snail which was found—not too frequently—in the marshes below. This possession of his he valued, and, as he said his prayers day by day, it became invested with a mystical importance. He looked on it as a very holy thing.

Coming out of church, among the last of the crowd, he let it fall upon the step of the door. He was stooping to pick it up, when he came in the way of Huber, the soldier, who sent him flying into the courtyard with a hearty kick.

The soldier stepped upon the rosary, breaking most of the shells, and then picked it up in some curiosity. He had it in his hand, and was showing it to his companions, when the serf, who had risen from the ground, leapt upon him in anger.

There was an instant scuffle, and a loud explosion of oaths. In a second or two three or four men held the unhappy serf by the arms, and had fastened him up to the post of the well in the centre of the yard. They tied him up with two or three turns of the well rope, which they unhooked from the bucket.

Huber took his leather belt and flogged him lustily, after his tunic of cat-skin had been pulled down to the waist. The wretch screamed for mercy, and attracted all the workmen round, who stood watching—the serfs in timid silence, and the men-at-arms with mirth and laughter. It may sound incredible, but Lady Alice herself, standing on the top step of the stairway leading to the tower door, watched with every sign of amusement. It was, in fact, no uncommon thing in those cruel times for great Norman and Saxon ladies to order their slaves to be horribly tortured on the slightest provocation. Cruelty seemed an integral part of their characters. There is, for example, a well-attested story of Ethelred's mother, who struck him so heavily with a bunch of candles which lay to her hand, that he fell senseless for near an hour.

Dom Anselm came out of chapel after a while, and sought the cause of the uproar.

"There, my men," he said, "let the theow go. Whatever he has done, he has paid toll now. And look to it, Henry, that you say an Ave to our Blessed Lady that you harbour no wrath towards your just lords."

With that they let him go, and, bleeding and sobbing, the poor fellow slunk away into the stables. Sitting in the straw, he cried as if his heart would break, until he felt hot breath on his cheek, and looking up saw large mild eyes, like still woodland pools, regarding him with love. Above him towered the vast form of "Duke Robert," Geoffroi's great war charger, as large and ponderous as a small elephant, his one dear friend. So he forgot his troubles a little while.

It was now about nine o'clock, and breakfast was served. The Baron and his son, and also the Lady Alice, never appeared in the great hall until the "noon meat" at three. They ate the first meal of the day in the "bowers" or sleeping chambers.

While the Lady Alice and her women superintended the more important household business, or sat in the orchard outside the south wall of the castle with their needlework, the Baron was throned in the gateway of the castle conducting the business of his estate, and presiding over a kind of local court.

The Justices in Eyre were hardly yet sufficiently established on circuit, and, moreover, the country was in so disturbed a state that the administration of law was merely in most cases, certainly at Hilgay, a question of local tyranny.

The whole business of the day was well afoot with all its multifarious activity when Hyla rested from his work, and sitting under the shadow of a stone wall, ate a hunk of bread which he had brought with him. He had sat late with Cerdic the night before, and, as he had half expected, had been bidden in the morning to work in Pierce's fields, and not to go to the castle. All the morning, since early dawn, he had been manuring fields with marl, in the old British fashion. The work was very hard, as the fields were only in the first stage of being reclaimed from wild common land, and required infinite preparation.

The supply of dung had given out, and the marl was hard to carry and bad to breathe.

The awful blow dealt to his whole life had dazed his brain for hours, but the long talk with Cerdic and Harl had condensed his pain within him, and turned it to strong purpose.

He thought over his life as he remembered it, his dull life of slavery, and saw with bitter clearness how the clouds were gathering round him and his kind. The present and the future alike were black as night, and the years pressed more and more heavily as they dragged onwards.

During the last years the serfs at Hilgay had been more ill-used and down-trodden than ever before. The Saxon gentlemen, who had held the forefathers of Hyla in thrall, were stern and hard, but life had been possible with them. Life was more light-hearted. Githa would sometimes dance upon the green when the day's work was done, and spend a few long-hoarded triens in an ivory comb or a string of coloured beads.

The Gesith or Thanes, the lesser nobility, had not been unkind to their slaves, and there was sometimes a draught of "pigment" for them—a sweet liquor, made of honey, wine, and spice—at times of festival.

Now everything was changed, and among the serfs a passionate spirit of hatred and revolt was springing up. The less intelligent of them sank into the condition of mere beasts of burden, without soul or brain. On the other hand, adversity had sharpened the