valuables which they had obtained from both abbeys in wagons, and
moved toward the south. It happened that some of these wagons were
under Count Sidroc's charge, and were in the rear of the line of
march. In passing a ford, the wheels of one of these rear wagons sank
in the muddy bottom, and the horses, in attempting to draw the wagon
out, became entangled and restive. While Sidroc's whole attention
was engrossed by this difficulty, Turgar contrived to steal away
unobserved. He hid himself in a neighboring wood, and, with a degree
of sagacity and discretion remarkable in a boy of his years, he
contrived to find his way back to the smoking ruins of his home at the
Abbey of Crowland.

The monks who had gone away to seek concealment at the cell of the
anchorite had returned, and were at work among the smoking ruins,
saving what they could from the fire, and gathering together the
blackened remains of their brethren for interment. They chose one of
the monks that had escaped to succeed the abbot who had been murdered,
repaired, so far as they could, their ruined edifices, and mournfully
resumed their functions as a religious community.

Many of the tales which the ancient chroniclers tell of those times
are romantic and incredible; they may have arisen, perhaps, in the
first instance, in exaggerations of incidents and events which really
occurred, and were then handed down from generation to generation by
oral tradition, till they found historians to record them. The story
of the martyrdom of King Edmund is of this character. Edmund was a
sort of king over one of the nations of Anglo-Saxons called East
Angles, who, as their name imports, occupied a part of the eastern
portion of the island. Their particular hostility to Edmund was
awakened, according to the story, in the following manner: