followed--the stranger fell by the arm he had provoked. The news
arrives to Earl Eustace; he and his kinsmen spur to the spot; they
murder the Englishman on his hearth-stone.--"

Here a groan, half-stifled and wrathful, broke from the ceorls at the
end of the hall. Godwin held up his hand in rebuke of the
interruption, and resumed.

"This deed done, the outlanders rode through the streets with their
drawn swords; they. butchered those who came in their way; they
trampled even children under their horses' feet. The burghers armed.
I thank the Divine Father, who gave me for my countrymen those gallant
burghers! They fought, as we English know how to fight; they slew
some nineteen or score of these mailed intruders; they chased them
from the town. Earl Eustace fled fast. Earl Eustace, we know, is a
wise man: small rest took he, little bread broke he, till he pulled
rein at the gate of Gloucester, where my lord the King then held
court. He made his complaint. My lord the King, naturally hearing
but one side, thought the burghers in the wrong; and, scandalised that
such high persons of his own kith should be so aggrieved, he sent for
me, in whose government the burgh of Dover is, and bade me chastise,
by military execution, those who had attacked the foreign Count. I
appeal to the great Earls whom I see before me--to you, illustrious
Leofric; to you, renowned Siward--what value would ye set on your
earldoms, if ye had not the heart and the power to see right done to
the dwellers therein?"

"What was the course I proposed? Instead of martial execution, which
would involve the whole burgh in one sentence, I submitted that the
reeve and gerefas of the burgh should be cited to appear before the