"How shouldst thou, poor Norman?" replied the Saxon, compassionately.
"The tale is soon told. Know that when Harold our Earl was banished,
and his lands taken, we his ceorls helped with his sixhaendman, Clapa,
to purchase his land, nigh by London, and the house wherein thou didst
find me, of a stranger, thy countryman, to whom they were lawlessly
given. And we tilled the land, we tended the herds, and we kept the
house till the Earl came back."

"Ye had moneys then, moneys of your own, ye ceorls!" said the Norman,
avariciously.

"How else could we buy our freedom? Every ceorl hath some hours to
himself to employ to his profit, and can lay by for his own ends.
These savings we gave up for our Earl, and when the Earl came back, he
gave the sixhaendman hides of land enow to make him a thegn; and he
gave the ceorls who hade holpen Clapa, their freedom and broad shares
of his boc-land, and most of them now hold their own ploughs and feed
their own herds. But I loved the Earl (having no wife) better than
swine and glebe, and I prayed him to let me serve him in arms. And so
I have risen, as with us ceorls can rise."

"I am answered," said Mallet de Graville, thoughtfully, and still
somewhat perplexed. "But these theowes, (they are slaves,) never
rise. It cannot matter to them whether shaven Norman or bearded Saxon
sit on the throne?"

"Thou art right there," answered the Saxon; "it matters as little to
them as it doth to thy thieves and felons, for many of them are felons
and thieves, or the children of such; and most of those who are not,
it is said, are not Saxons, but the barbarous folks whom the Saxons